A large part of an editor's job is rejection. Perhaps nine-tenths. In those days at least, it was not only rejection of manuscripts but of those ideas that seemed to come walking into my office every day in the shape of pensive men and women talking with judicious facial expressions about such mutilated concepts as optimist/pessimist, fascist/communist, extrovert/introvert, highbrow/middlebrow/lowbrow; and this claptrap they applied to art, literature and life to the effect that all joy, wit and the pleasures of curiosity were quite squeezed out.
Muriel Spark, A Far Cry From Kensington
More on this later, but I will say now that I enjoyed it very much. Mrs. Hawkins is one of the more memorable characters I've come across lately.
