Life & Wisdom Quote by James Laughlin

Literary culture loves to flatter itself as a republic of letters; Laughlin reminds you it’s also a business with a human face and, occasionally, a knife. The line toggles between tenderness and triage: “sad occasions” and “let them go” sit in the same breath, as if compassion can soften the click of a contract shutting. That tonal whiplash is the point. Laughlin, as New Directions’ founder and a poet himself, isn’t speaking as a distant executive but as someone who has likely shared meals, drafts, and doubts with the people he publishes. The intimacy is real, and it’s also part of the machinery.

The intent here is managerial candor dressed in humane language. “Has not grown” sounds like an aesthetic judgment, but it quietly encodes market logic: growth means momentum, relevance, the sense that a writer’s next book will matter enough to justify the investment. “Not making headway” is almost corporate, a euphemism that makes artistic stagnation feel measurable, like a lagging KPI. Laughlin’s brilliance is in admitting the uncomfortable overlap: taste and friendship; mentorship and gatekeeping.

The subtext is that publishing’s most mythologized virtues - loyalty, devotion to art, belief in genius - have conditions. You can care deeply and still cut someone loose. “Very clear personal relationship” reads like a reassurance to himself as much as to us: we don’t drop authors, we part ways with people we know. It’s an ethical posture and a coping mechanism, acknowledging that cultural stewardship sometimes means being the one who decides who gets to keep going.