An essay in favor of imperfect writing —and a lucid reflection on narrative disobedience as the origin of literature.

Foreword by Julián Herbert.

What to do with the problems that appear when writing? Eliminate them? Ignore them? Far from the canon of “good writing,” this book explores the opposite: deepen them. Against the rigor of creative writing workshops, this essay transforms the imperfections and difficulties of narration into opportunities for experimentation: a kind of master class where Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, César Aira and other authors emerge who, instead of correcting their mistakes, tried them over and over again until they became style, the origin of their own voice, and thus revealed the origin of great literature. All this articulated by a writer of whom Roberto Bolaño said that “he is one of the best living Latin American writers and there are very few of us who enjoy it and realize it.”

“Failing once is a mistake, everyone fails; "In the end, there is always the correction to get us back on track and return us to the fold. No: we have to fail again and again, always, as if there were no other way to do things. Because repetition is evidence that failure does not depend on will; it is not chosen, and therefore it is useless to try to appease it, channel it or stop it." —Alan Pauls