A so-called bad book has as much to teach us as a good book. It is often a far better teacher than any uniformly artistic work, where excellence masks the practical aspects of the craft. A bad book also teaches us something that a better book can't: humility. Not the humility of resignation, that of admitting that we will never be very good at what we do, no matter how seriously we try. Such humility can easily turn into an indulgent self-flagellation that demands the commiseration of friends or brings our vocation to a standstill, where from then on we are those people who petulantly claim that “we could have been