These 'Empty Words' Are Full Of Life
The late Uruguayan novelist Mario Levrero was known for his gleeful weirdness. Empty Words follows a writer who tries to cure his block by writing boring nothings — and it's anything but boring.
The Uruguayan novelist Mario Levrero, who died in 2004, is beloved among Latin American readers for his gleeful weirdness. Levrero wrote comic book scripts, crosswords, brain teasers, and novels, all of which function as brain teasers themselves.
In the introduction to , his first novel to appear in English, translator Annie McDermott writes, "In Latin America, it's said that Chile produces poets, Argentina produces short story writers, Mexico produces novelists, and Uruguay produces 'los raros' — the strange ones. Levrero was a raro, the sixth of Levrero's ten novels, certainly qualifies as a strange thing: a novel pretending to be a series of handwriting exercises, which are meant to have no content at all.
