Life & Wisdom Quote by James Laughlin

"We do very little re-writing in the office. We often take on people who show great promise and who we hope will develop into somebody important and someone good"

James Laughlin, Poet

About this Quote

Aesthetic risk is the quiet thesis here: Laughlin is describing an editorial posture that treats literature less like a product to be polished and more like a person to be cultivated. “Very little re-writing” isn’t laziness; it’s a vote of confidence in voice. It signals a house style built around discovery rather than correction, the kind of confidence you can afford when you’re more interested in originality than in smoothing out the burrs that make a writer distinctive.

The subtext is power, wielded softly. Laughlin frames selection as the real edit: the office won’t remake you, but it will choose you. That’s a gatekeeping model with a benevolent face. The promise of minimal intervention flatters the writer’s autonomy while reinforcing the editor’s authority to anoint “somebody important.” It’s patronage disguised as restraint.

Context matters: Laughlin wasn’t just any poet; he was the founder of New Directions, the imprint that helped move modernism into American literary life. In that ecosystem, “promise” is currency and “develop” is an institutional verb. The office becomes a greenhouse for talent, but also a taste-making machine: the editor’s job is to bet early, then let the market (and history) validate the bet.

The closing phrase, “someone good,” adds an ethical dimension that’s almost quaint in its confidence. It suggests character counts alongside craft, as if literary importance is inseparable from moral seriousness. That’s idealistic, and also strategic: it brands the imprint as a cultural steward, not merely a publisher.

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Topic	Team Building
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About the Author

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

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