From the files of “What Were They Thinking?” here’s an excerpt from the acceptance letter that Avram Davidson sent to Roger Zelazny when accepting Zelazny’s early, classic story “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”:
We are taking your novelet, ‘A Rose for Ecclesiastes’ (a minor point: to avoid inapplicable comparison with A Canticle for Leibowitz, would you consider, ‘For Ecclesiastes: A Rose’…?).
Ugh. I mean, that’s not as bad as Horace Gold on “Flowers for Algernon,” but it sure ain’t good. Fortunately Davidson goes on to say just a few sentences later:
It has occurred to me that the parallel with Miller’s title was deliberate. If you wish the title to remain as it is, it will.
And so it did. Thank goodness.
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