I'm not going to go into detail about where this guy went wrong, because I think that's been done plenty already, but the thing that makes me have a little bit of sympathy for the guy, despite it all, is knowing that a. Every aspiring writer has been told how brilliant his/her work is, by somebody who really means it, b. Everybody has read something in a professional journal and thought, "How the hell did that get in there?" and c. It takes a while to figure out how many other people are out there who write, and how many other brilliant writers you're competing with whenever you send work to a good journal.

That said, Jennifer, I think you handled this beautifully.