Empty Words

From a legendary cult figure in Latin American literature, the story of a writer who obsessively observes his own handwriting in search of answers about his identity.

An eccentric novelist begins to keep a notebook of handwriting exercises, hoping that if he’s able to improve his penmanship, his personal character will also improve. What begins as a mere physical exercise becomes involuntarily colored by humorous reflections and tender anecdotes about living, writing, and the sense—or nonsense—of existence.

Publication date: May 21, 2019 

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 5 x 7.75 

Page count: 152 pages

ISBN: 9781566895460

Translated from the Spanish

Mario Levrero was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1940 and died there in 2004. Levrero was a photographer, bookseller, comics scriptwriter, humorist, crossword author, and creator of brain games. In his later years, he directed a literary workshop. Empty Words is his first novel translated and published in English.

Annie McDermott’s translations from Spanish and Portuguese have appeared in Granta, the White Review, Asymptote, Two Lines, and World Literature Today, among others.

“[A] teasing jeu d'esprit . . . As a calling card for Levrero’s talent, it’s certainly enticing.”

—The Guardian

“Reading his exercises is relaxing, like sitting at the kitchen table and chatting with a friend . . . charmingly, haplessly funny.”

—NPR

“A very funny satire on the realistic novel . . . [a] brilliant little tour de force.”

—The Star Tribune

“Empty Words contains two threads: the handwriting exercises (complete with distractions) and what Levrero calls ‘The Discourse,’ which has the stated aim of being about nothing.”

—Rain Taxi

"Levrero writes, on the whole, with lightness, economy and precision, and throughout the book the predominant tone – beautifully captured by Annie McDermott’s elegant translation – is one of appealing curiosity and bemused wonder."

—The National

“More than just an exercise in chasing his own tail, Levrero takes himself into dangerous psychological territory, wrestling with the things that underlie his loopy a’s.”

—Kirkus

“There is a tenderness and honesty in Levrero’s work: Empty Words is a sincere offering, a gentle yet thorough contemplation of life’s immensities.”

—The Typescript

“A lighthearted wisdom beats in every sentence of Empty Words, a little masterpiece by Mario Levrero, who is, to me, one of the funniest and most influential writers of recent times.”

—Alejandro Zambra

“We are all his children.”

—Álvaro Enrigue

“An eccentric, funny, and original novel: philosophical but playful, short but obsessive, ironic but desperate, and theoretical but intimate.” 

—Dana Spiotta

“Of all [Levrero's] works, Empty Words is the best means of accessing this singular author, who continues to gain followers and whose reputation has long since outgrown the niche reserved for cult authors.” 

—Ignacio Echevarría

“In short, the title of Empty Words is deceptive. On the contrary, it is full. Full of the mystery that is the irrational side of the act of writing.”

—Transfuge

“A very funny, very sad reflection on the ways people try (and fail) to simplify their lives.”

—The Millions

“An intense form of introspection that has nothing to do with the usual narcissism of the world of letters.”

—Le Matricule des Anges

“A humorous story, tinged with eroticism and interspersed with calligraphic exercises.”

—Livres Hebdo

“One can take this genre as a diary, as a novel entirely imagined, as an autobiographical or purely psychological analysis, ‘an act of self-construction’ . . . A Cartesian mind who wishes to decide would deprive himself of the healthy freedom that Mario Levrero offers him.”

—Nouveaux Espaces Latinos

“[Empty Words] is a concentrate of Uruguayan humor, and the narrator, busy perfecting his upstrokes and downstrokes, almost forgets to have something to say.”

—L’Obs