Art & Creativity Quote by Guillermo Cabrera Infante

A title, for Guillermo Cabrera Infante, isn’t the label you slap on after the hard work. It’s the ignition switch. Coming from a novelist whose best-known work (Tres tristes tigres) is basically a carnival of sound - puns, slang, verbal riffing, linguistic sabotage - the claim reads less like a quirky preference and more like a manifesto: the book begins as a phrase, a rhythm, a dare.

The subtext is control. Cabrera Infante writes in a century where politics, censorship, and exile constantly rename you against your will. A Cuban writer pushed out by the Revolution, he learned that words don’t just describe reality; they police it. Insisting on the title first is a way of staking territory before anyone else can. He’s choosing the frame, the lens, the tone of voice that will govern what follows.

It also signals a craftsman’s suspicion of the so-called blank page. “I cannot write without a title” sounds like dependency, but it’s really a method: the title becomes a constraint that generates invention. In his work, language doesn’t march; it improvises. A good title functions like a chord progression for a jazz solo - it sets key, tempo, and the promise of what kind of pleasures (and traps) are coming.

There’s wit in the absolutism, too. “Essential for me” is both confession and provocation: if you think titles are marketing, you’re reading the wrong writer. For Cabrera Infante, the title is already literature. The rest is the echo.