I don’t think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

Fuentes draws a sharp line between mere transcription of lived events and the imaginative, exploratory work he associates with serious literature. The first sentence rejects the idea that a “good book” is simply a reshaped memoir of “what happened”; instead, it implies that strong fiction (and even strong nonfiction) transforms experience through invention, structure, and language. The second sentence reframes “bad books” as those that merely rehearse settled knowledge—writing that confirms the author’s preconceptions rather than discovering something new. Taken together, the remark champions writing as a mode of inquiry: the book’s value lies in what the author learns, risks, and uncovers in the act of composition.