Wealth & Money Quote by Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Cabrera Infante turns a familiar bit of writerly cynicism into a sly moral gambit: he quotes the old saw about art for self and publication for cash, then flips the punchline so the reader becomes the stated beneficiary. It lands because it sounds like modesty while quietly asserting a high-stakes ethic. He is not denying commerce; he is repositioning it. Money is the blunt instrument everyone expects, so he swaps in the reader as a more flattering motive, and in doing so claims a purer contract: publication as service, not surrender.

The subtext is sharper. “Just for the reader” carries a whiff of provocation: if you believe him, you are already implicated in his project. Cabrera Infante’s work, especially in the Cuban-exile orbit, is obsessed with audience as co-conspirator - someone who catches the pun, hears the music, recognizes the coded reference. Declaring allegiance to the reader is also a declaration of style: he will be demanding, playful, polyphonic, and he expects you to meet him there. In that sense, the line performs what it promises: it courts you, but it also tests you.

Context matters because his career was shaped by politics and displacement. For an exiled novelist, “publishing” is never only a market act; it’s a way of keeping a language and a world alive outside official control. The reader becomes more than a customer: a witness, an accomplice, a refuge. The joke hides a serious claim about who literature is for when home is no longer available.