The impossibility of making money and the pointlessness, if not shame, of making a name for oneself in a supremely miserable cultural environment should mean that only those who cannot do otherwise should persist in writing. And that is a good thing. It is true that, in practice, this only happens as a trend; but it is something. A colossus like Mário Ferreira dos Santos serves to both drive away the shams and motivate the ideal ones.