"Often something comes in from which you can see that the person is good, the book may not be perfect as it is, and the person doesn't want to do a re-write. That's something we do almost nothing of"
About this Quote
Laughlin is sketching a nearly extinct editorial ethic: publishing as an act of discernment rather than correction. The line turns on a quiet provocation - that you can tell someone is "good" even when the manuscript isn’t. In a culture that treats revision as both sacrament and liability (artistic purity on one side, marketability on the other), he’s describing a third posture: backing the writer anyway, and accepting roughness as part of the signal.
The syntax does the work. He doesn’t say the book is good; he says "something comes in" and you can see the person is. That’s a publisher’s x-ray vision: talent recognized as trajectory, not product. The writer "doesn't want to do a re-write" isn’t framed as laziness; it’s an artistic boundary. Laughlin’s subtext is that the job of an editor-publisher isn’t always to win the argument with the author; sometimes it’s to understand what the author is protecting.
Context matters: as the founder of New Directions, Laughlin built a list by gambling on modernist risk and idiosyncrasy, often importing writers who didn’t fit American expectations of polish or propriety. His complaint - "That's something we do almost nothing of" - sounds like a lament for a publishing world increasingly run by process: workshops, gatekeeping, developmental edits, the managerial belief that every promising voice can be engineered into a "perfect" book. Laughlin is arguing for imperfection as evidence, and for faith as a business model: bet on the writer, not the draft.
The syntax does the work. He doesn’t say the book is good; he says "something comes in" and you can see the person is. That’s a publisher’s x-ray vision: talent recognized as trajectory, not product. The writer "doesn't want to do a re-write" isn’t framed as laziness; it’s an artistic boundary. Laughlin’s subtext is that the job of an editor-publisher isn’t always to win the argument with the author; sometimes it’s to understand what the author is protecting.
Context matters: as the founder of New Directions, Laughlin built a list by gambling on modernist risk and idiosyncrasy, often importing writers who didn’t fit American expectations of polish or propriety. His complaint - "That's something we do almost nothing of" - sounds like a lament for a publishing world increasingly run by process: workshops, gatekeeping, developmental edits, the managerial belief that every promising voice can be engineered into a "perfect" book. Laughlin is arguing for imperfection as evidence, and for faith as a business model: bet on the writer, not the draft.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by James
Add to List
