We live in a society which forces us to know how to write but does not teach us to do it. How can it be that after so many years of learning, there is still such a great number of citizens who still are not able to write a letter or a report? Has this inability anything to do with the contempt against literature of some of our teachers? Is it possible for anyone to improve their writing without bettering their reading?

Facing the avalanche of manuals that pretend to reduce writing to a technique or the romantic thesis that limits writing to those born with the gift, writing becomes an inseparable mix of inspiration and work, of genius and competence, of magic and discipline. That is the reason why the best writing teachers, literary or not, are Horace, Calvino, Poe or Nabokov.