Empty Words by Mario Levrero

 

Uruguay, the Latin American country famous for producing strange writers - none stranger than Mario Levrero (1940-2004).

You want far out? You want peculiar? You want uncanny? A Mario Levrero novel is so strange it crosses over into the literary land of gleeful weirdness.

Gleeful weirdness. Say that three times fast while laughing and jumping up and down. My kind of writing. And Mario Levrero is definitely my kind of author.

Mario Levrero wrote over two dozen books, mostly novels. The first Levrero novel to be published in English is the book under review - Empty Words.

Mario Levrero's masterpiece, The Luminous Novel, will be translated into English this August. I can hardly wait.

The Luminous Novel - 400 pages detailing why he, Mario Levrero, could not write the novel he received a Guggenheim grant to write.

Mario Levrero possessed a boundless imagination. Critics and reviewers were forever attempting to categorize Mario's writing but he was simply too creative for any school or niche, no matter how expansive. As Mario told an interviewer: “It would be far more interesting for them if, instead of writing, I committed a murder.”

Ever since Mario published his first novel, La Ciudad (The City), at age 26, one fact has always remained consistent: everything Mario Levrero has written can be recognized instantly, his literary voice is that distinctive.

Question: What is writing for Mario Levrero? Answer: a brain teaser, a mystery, a tool for solving mystery, both a means for exploring the unconscious and a bi-product of the unconscious, a creative articulation transcending categories, a free expression of the imagination.

Turning to Empty Words, we have a narrator who embarks on a therapy to better his life: improved penmanship. "The idea, then, is that by changing the behavior observed in a person's handwriting, it may be possible to change other things about that person."

According to the narrator, we're talking change on a number of important levels: “transforming a whole plethora of bad behaviors into good ones and catapulting blissfully into a life of happiness, joy, money, and success.”

After nearly two month of practice, the narrator reinforces his initial thinking: "I have to let my inner self change and grow under the magical influence of graphology. Big writing, big me. Small writing, small me. Beautiful writing, beautiful me."

Does his personal metamorphosis go further? Oh, yes. With more practice, he reports: "I want to get in touch with myself, with the miraculous being that lives inside me and is able, among so many other extraordinary things, to fabricate interesting stories and cartoons."

Such ruminations culminate in a rousing crescendo of self-discovery: "That's the point. That's what it's all about. Reconnecting with the inner being, the being which is part, in some secret way, of the divine spark that roams tirelessly through the Universe, giving it life, keeping it going, and lending reality to what would otherwise be an empty shell."

Now, do you sense Mario Levrero might be sticking a sharp satiric needle into his narrator's fleshy backside, suggesting all this inner glory via improved handwriting might be so much bullshitski? Could be, especially since Mario provides a note on the text and a Prologue that themselves might be written with his tongue deep in his cheek.

And how does our narrator fare in his goal of improved handwriting? As he quickly discovers, his attention is forever being pulled in the direction of literature and meaning. This to say, when his focus shifts away from maintaining uniform loops and crossing all his ts while keeping his handwriting large and smooth to focusing on the content and meaning of what he's writing (a literary man just can't help himself), his penmanship reverts back to his old habit of small, cramped and a jagged mixing of print and script. Darn!

Problems assail our poor narrator from every angle. Oh, yes, to compound his difficulties, other slices are continually being added to his writer's pie - for example: his disturbing dreams, insomnia, past unsettling memories, son Ignacio's interruptions, drama revolving around a dog and then a cat, wife Alicia's list of demands, his natural inclination to philosophize.

"The fact is, we're all nothing but the crossover points of threads that stretch far beyond us, reaching from one unknown place to another. Not even this language I'm using belongs to me. I didn't invent it, and if I had it would be no use for communicating with."

So curious. Crossover points, language, communication - all abstract concepts as the narrator completes his handwriting exercise. Is it truly possible to write meaningful sentences devoid of meaning? If he was only after an improvement in penmanship, why not repeat a word or two or three containing the most challenging letters to keep large and smooth? That's exactly what I would do if I wanted to concentrate exclusively on my handwriting without letting even a trace of meaning or content enter into my composing.

"My character obliges me, and enables me, to do things one way and not another. I approach tasks with a degree of Zen; as far as I'm concerned, things should be done when they're good and ready, and their readiness is something I need to feel coming from within myself."

I see the narrator's reflection above as supercharged with meaning. Does he feel, really feel, he's ready to concentrate on improving his handwriting when his mind continually pulls him away to think about what content he's writing? Will he abandon his penmanship project once he senses inspiration for a work of fiction flooding in, where the story might even 'tell itself' while using his pen and paper as the vehicle?

And can this whole writing exercise be likened to Oulipo's constrained writing techniques with such works as Georges Perec's novel, A Void, where Perec composed an entire 300-page saga without once using the letter 'e'? Can we liken the absence of meaning and content for Mario Levrero's narrator to Georges Perec's absence of that frisky vowel?

Any novel gives a reader an opportunity to watch the mind of the novelist at work. With Empty Words, watching Mario Levrero's mind at work is the main attraction - and what an attraction it is. Besides which, reading Empty Words is fun. Special call-out to Annie McDermott for her excellent translation.


Uruguayan author Mario Levrero, 1940-2004