The clock on the wall read eleven o’clock. In the evening. He’d been awake for about 48 straight. Couldn’t sleep anymore. He also didn’t bother looking in the mirror or taking a shower. Thankfully, he did not have to share the space of his apartment in San Telmo with anyone. The deep circles under his eyes betrayed an age that insisted on dragging with it, one by one, all his dreams and expectations. On the table, the fragments of a manuscript that was both the glory and the bane of his life. A novel he’d been writing for forty years.
On the wall, a photo reminded him of another time, another era. A smiling 21 yo looked at the camera with optimism. A reminder of better days. Luis Gonzales Pérez was 64 now and a man disappointed with life. Absolutely nothing had turned out the way he anticipated. In his youth he made plans for a brilliant future, now he only had the shards of a past that should not have been. And all of this, all this despondency, because of those pages on the table. Forty years trying to get out of himself a story that refused to come out.
How did it all begin, the life and the story? Well, weren’t they both the same thing at that point? Perhaps if we went back in time and saw a 23-year-old Peruvian immigrant trying to fit into the still-prejudiced and elitist Argentinian society of 1984, fresh from a military dictatorship, we might begin to get a better idea. Luís traveled to Buenos Aires with the promise of restarting his life there, after many years of poverty and misery in Peru. He was going there to work as a driver, but his real dream in life was to be a writer.
Luís had a positive image of Argentina in his mind mainly because of one guy: Quino. Early on, he took a liking to reading Mafalda. The nonconformist little girl who questioned everything was his source of inspiration as he grew from childhood to adolescence, remaining with him for the rest of his life. But the Argentinian society he actually found was nothing like it seemed in his imagination. He was highly discriminated against for his typically Peruvian features. Amidst the predominantly white population, he couldn’t go unnoticed. No matter how good he worked, he felt like a second rate citizen.
Working as a driver had its perks. He drove for a wealthy family in Recoleta who paid him well and treated their employees with respect, though they always made it clear they were just employees. But the job allowed him to do many things: fix up his first apartment, save some money, and even meet Renata, who would become his first and only wife. She worked as a maid in the house. Luís’s main distraction, however, were books. At first, he hated literature, finding it pedantic. But two books changed his mind: Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.
The moment he read Kafka, he said to himself, “Now I want to do this shit!” But he was truly doomed from the moment he read Faulkner. There was no way out. He would either write something as great as As I Lay Dying or die trying. That’s how, in mid-1985, he began writing his story. What would it be about? Well, what else, coming from an immigrant in love with Kafka and Faulkner? It could only be the tragedy of man displaced in time and space. He remembered the exact moment he sat down to write the first lines.
The apartment was small, and he was writing at the kitchen table. His wife was uptight, trying to clean the house and look after the baby born three months earlier. His name was William. He could barely concentrate on writing. He figured he couldn’t write in that situation, at that hour; perhaps at night it would work. Indeed, around eleven o’clock that night, he sat back down at the table and took advantage of the silence to try to write. Problem was that he wrote a few sentences, but nothing that made much sense. What would the story be about?
Essentially, it was about himself, about exiled men like himself. Out of place, but still searching for connection with the people and the world around him. Luís saw nothing wrong with himself or his behavior; he worked hard, fought for his family, and yet he was looked at askance by people who only saw his exterior. He sympathized with everyone going through a similar situation and wanted to give them a voice through a poignant, heartfelt, unparalleled text. But the sentences were slow to come. He wondered if his education was insufficient. But Kafka himself wrote in his spare time!
First few sentences came out, but they weren’t at all what he’d hoped for. They even had a certain vigor, but something was missing. They lacked strength, they lacked true emotion. As he read and reread those modest lines, he wondered if this was really what he wanted to do in life. So, he decided he would have to read more, much more, to gain the experience and sensitivity to detect when and how the written word can truly express grand and sincere feelings. If at first he thought of writing a typical novel, over time he changed his mind.
He went through many phases in his literary coming of age. From the magical realism of Borges, Calvino, and Sabato, to García Márquez, Kundera, Günter Grass, and the psychological novel of Dostoevsky, all the way to modernism and postmodernism. Hemingway and Kerouac were invited to the party, but Burroughs and his Naked Lunch were turned away: the lunch was too indigestible for Luís’s sensitive stomach. As he explored these authors and their works, his novel was being transformed. He would write entire chapters in one style and then change radically. He would erase everything and go back to the beginning.
At first, he adopted a realistic and psychological style. Later, he decided to incorporate elements of magical realism into the story, thinking it would make it more interesting. But he was never satisfied with the result. Sometimes it seemed too tedious, sometimes superficial. Sometimes the writing was passionate and moving, other times cliché-ridden and predictable. He intended to be original, sincere, and poignant. In the meantime, two more children were born, a boy and a girl, and he changed jobs. He became a real estate agent. With less time to work, he considered quitting. So he began writing short stories.
The entire text was compiled by a friend of Luís’s who encouraged him to write and knew a publisher who might publish the text if it was good. To the amateur writer’s surprise, the publisher, based in Buenos Aires, agreed to publish his story as long as he edited out several sections that wouldn’t go down well with the public. These were critical of the false moralism of Argentinians and their social and racial prejudice. When Luís received the typed text back, he realized that about 35% of it would need to be edited—precisely the most intense parts of all.
At that moment, he felt utterly frustrated. After years of writing the story with the utmost dedication and sincerity, he would have to completely mutilate it to be “accepted” by the public. His discouragement was so great that he had a serious argument with his wife, who didn’t understand her husband’s obsession and, truly, knew nothing about literature. For a time, he decided to abandon the project altogether. He devoted himself more to his family and, in his spare time, wrote only some short stories. One day, he almost forgot he had spent so much time on a single story.
He nearly burned the 800 manuscript pages he had compiled so far. As he was about to throw them all in the trash, he stopped to read a deeply moving passage about his mother, how she struggled to raise him in Peru, and how, despite all the hardships, she taught her children to always give their best, no matter the situation. Luís realized it wasn’t just trash; it was his story, his life, best thing he had ever done. As a broker, he was just one more. As a writer, he was in the company of Borges, Kafka, and Sabato.
He then reread each sentence in the text, trying to understand how he could write it in a way that would make his message clear while also not hurting anyone’s feelings. He realized this was impossible. Someone would always be bothered by something he wrote, no matter how insignificant. He began writing voraciously, but adding new chapters to the story that reflected his own experiences over the past few years. He was already 38 years old, had four children, and had seen and experienced a lot. Each new experience was a new chapter in the story. Everything, everyone mattered.
No matter how hard he tried, however, he could never finish the story. He was already wondering why he had started it all. What had started as a literary project had become an obsession, and even his marriage and work were suffering. Renata felt lonely, even living in a small apartment, and complained Luís didn’t care about her. At work, complaints about his neglect grew louder. In 2008, at 47, he was fired. He was unemployed for about three months, and his wife had to work to support the family and two young children. The marriage was on life support.
What he did in the meantime was finally manage to publish a collection of short stories he’d been writing in the short time he’d forgotten about the novel. They were stories written in a Hemingway-esque style: short, direct, about simple people similar to himself. Taking that book into his hands was a rewarding experience, one that almost made up for more than 20 years of frustration. He could, then, be published. He had etched his name, albeit modestly, in the history of Argentine literature. When the book was released, even his wife seemed to finally understand his passion for writing.
A little later, he discovered Junot Díaz and Oscar Wao. This work proved fundamental to the development of his vision, more so than most of what he had read previously. The way the Dominican Díaz compared life as a citizen of his country and as an immigrant in the USA deeply impacted him, and he thought that perhaps this was what his work was missing: a more consistent background. He once again set about rewriting his story, but as he was never satisfied with the outcome of this interminable work, he began writing another, more accessible and simple in scope.
At that time, in 2015, he worked as an office assistant. Never had any ambition to become rich. He liked jobs that allowed him time to write. Making a living from literature, he knew it was impossible. His books sold very few copies. But it wasn’t about money, he knew that. The passion for creation had taken over him. After this second book was published, he knew it was his mission in life. But the second work was just a prologue. He touched on the central theme of his life, but superficially. He wanted to go much deeper than that.
It was then that the inevitable decline of his marriage began, along with the estrangement of his children, now all adults. No one in the family understood his passion for printed paper or writing. By this time, his handwritten pages already numbered more than 2,000. He wrote and rewrote the story, every detail, dozens of times. Sometimes he would stay up writing all night, when his wife just wanted to sleep. He resented disturbing her, but he couldn’t help himself. He wrote the words by hand and later typed them. He enjoyed writing on paper, like the ancient writers.
In 2017, the inevitable divorce happened. Luís tried everything he could to convince Renata to stay, but she wouldn’t listen anymore. A clear case of “your obsession or me!”, and he almost chose her, but it was too late. It had been months since they’d even had proper sex. All his free time was dedicated to literature. He recognized it was almost a disease. The story swirled in his head, he was completely sure of where he wanted to go with it, but there was always a detail to add, a chapter to edit. Would he die without finishing it?
He certainly could have died, because at 56, his health wasn’t the best. He was overweight, had stomach problems, and back pain. He slept poorly, waking up thinking about that story that needed to be told. At work, people complained about his diligence, his hygiene, and about spending his work hours typing texts that had nothing to do with his job. At least then, he tried to control himself as much as possible, even consulting with the company psychologist. But one day, in 2023, caught spending the whole time typing his text, he was fired. The project wasn’t finished yet.
And so we return once again to where we began. Luís is not crazy, as it might seem at first glance. He’s divorced, unemployed, living in the apartment of his only friend, sick, with a stomach ulcer that threatens to kill him sooner or later, but not crazy. He’s fully aware of everything he does. With the separation and unemployment, he finally found the time he wanted to finish his great work. So far, it’s over 5,000 handwritten and typed pages. An infinite amount of paper that can’t simply be called trash, because it’s the story of a life.
Yes, story of a life. Luís, despite his exhaustion, was now fully aware of why he could never finish that work. Because he’d started out wanting to tell a complete story, with a beginning, middle, and end, but such wasn’t his story; his story went on. His story was happening now. Even in this moment of sadness and loneliness, his story continued to unfold. So, logically, it couldn’t be contained in a book while he was alive. Luís knew perfectly well that he would die without seeing that story published. Perhaps they would even burn all pages after his death.
He didn’t care; his life was now coming full circle. His wife was a distant memory, his children didn’t even care about him. His published books were gathering dust on some shelf. But none of that mattered anymore; only his work mattered; his work was his life. Every moment he’d experienced since his childhood in Lima was contained there—the good times and the bad, the hours of joy and sadness—everything was condensed there. Those pages, soiled from being leafed through so much, were the greatest thing he’d ever done, because no one he knew had written such a big story.
Through these 5,000 pages, he did more than affirm his desire to become a writer; he effectively affirmed his life, his place in existence. Those pages are his message to the world, his testimony. He was here, he observed many things he disagreed with, things he could only fight through writing. And he fought. He fought for what he believed, against injustice and blindness, against unprovoked hatred, unjustified discrimination. Even though no one will ever read those countless words, he lived through them, for them, so each one had meaning. Much more than anything else he could have done.
He regretted not having been a better husband, a better father. But he consoled himself with the thought that he spent his life dreaming of a world of better husbands and fathers. Men who didn’t have to take out the injustices they suffered on their dear families. Above all, he was proud to stand alongside Hemingway, Faulkner, Kafka, Homer, Dostoevsky, Dickens, and so many others who made the world a little more bearable. Perhaps no one will ever benefit from his message. But he, at least, took full advantage of it. He lived in it. He will die for it.