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A review by hypops
Empty Words by Mario Levrero
2.0
As a book, Levrero’s Empty Words is not a great read; however, as an experimental record of a year in the author’s life, it’s moderately interesting.
When Levrero undertakes his project to improve his handwriting, he intends it as a meditative daily practice that might allow him to focus on the literal act of writing, and thereby, so he hopes, to reveal to himself the mystery of his own hang-ups. It’s a kind of self-therapy that, as you might guess, fails miserably.
He’s a middle-aged Uruguayan man whose domestic life seems defined by his feeling “marginalized” by his wife and series of maids, and who finds a disturbingly abusive kinship with his dog Pongo. He’s not a sympathetic character, even though he perpetually seems in need of reassurance, praise, and care.
The book also is strange in that it’s so intensely focused on his handwriting, but his handwriting has been “translated” from his written script into typed script (for publication) and has again been translated from Spanish to English. Needless to say, much is lost in each process, so much in fact, that I’m not sure what one might take from the book after reading it.
When Levrero undertakes his project to improve his handwriting, he intends it as a meditative daily practice that might allow him to focus on the literal act of writing, and thereby, so he hopes, to reveal to himself the mystery of his own hang-ups. It’s a kind of self-therapy that, as you might guess, fails miserably.
He’s a middle-aged Uruguayan man whose domestic life seems defined by his feeling “marginalized” by his wife and series of maids, and who finds a disturbingly abusive kinship with his dog Pongo. He’s not a sympathetic character, even though he perpetually seems in need of reassurance, praise, and care.
The book also is strange in that it’s so intensely focused on his handwriting, but his handwriting has been “translated” from his written script into typed script (for publication) and has again been translated from Spanish to English. Needless to say, much is lost in each process, so much in fact, that I’m not sure what one might take from the book after reading it.