Art & Creativity Quote by James Laughlin

"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"

James Laughlin, Poet

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.

Quote Details

Topic	Writing
Source	Help us find the source
Cite

More Quotes by James Add to List

About the Author

James Laughlin (October 30, 1914 - November 12, 1997) was a Poet from USA.

20 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

"A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author's soul"

Aldous Huxley, Novelist

Aldous Huxley

"Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it"

Michael Crichton, Author

"The things I write are for those who are willing to accept a new relationship between the reader and the author"

Jerzy Kosinski, Novelist

"The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other"

Ernest Hemingway, Novelist

"Some authors have a very hard time understanding that in order to be faithful to the spirit of the book, it's almost always impossible to remain faithful to the text. You have to make changes"

Richard Russo, Novelist

"Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book, your composition of yourself is at stake"

E. L. Doctorow, Author

"The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything"

Walter Bagehot, Author

Walter Bagehot

"The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it"

Thomas Wolfe, Novelist

"I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it"

Ann Patchett, Author

Ann Patchett

"The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you're not in that existential panic when you don't have a novel at all"

Rose Tremain, Novelist

"Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books, not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like"

Walter Benjamin, Critic

Walter Benjamin

"I always want to write something better than the last book"

Tracy Kidder, Author

"The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence"

Cyril Connolly, Journalist

"I often reread books I have written"

Taylor Caldwell, Author

"There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book"

Terri Windling, Artist

"Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness"

Kate DiCamillo, Author

"Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book"

Malcolm Cowley, Critic

"One of the pleasantest things about book writing is that sometimes it brings one in touch with old friends"

Rachel Field, Novelist

"Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing"

Joan Didion, Author

"I don't think the author should make the reader do that much work to remember who somebody is"

Kevin J. Anderson, Author

Kevin J. Anderson