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Mario Levrero
Mario Levrero
Born	Jorge Mario Varlotta Levrero; 23 January 1940; Montevideo, Uruguay
Died	30 August 2004 (aged 64)
Occupation	Author

Jorge Mario Varlotta Levrero (23 January 1940 – 30 August 2004), better known as Mario Levrero, was a Uruguayan author. He authored nearly 20 novels as well as writing articles, columns, comic books and crosswords.^[1] His work is said to be influenced by Franz Kafka, Lewis Carroll and surrealism.^[2]^[3]^[4] Throughout his life he shunned publicity and was difficult with interviewers. Regardless, he became a cult figure in Uruguay and Argentina.^[5]^[4]

His writing was often branded as science fiction or genre fiction, a categorisation he strongly rejected.^[2]^[4] Critics have commented on the both sinister and humorous nature of his work.^[4]^[1]

Biography

Levrero was born in Montevideo in 1940 to an Italian-Uruguayan family.^[1]^[4] He stopped attending school at age 14 due to a heart murmur and instead spent his time in bed, reading and listening to tango music.^[5]

Having never finished school, he claimed that attending a tango club was his university. In his twenties, he ran a secondhand bookshop with a friend and was briefly a member of the Communist Party of Uruguay's youth wing.^[5] His first short stories were published in science fiction magazines in Buenos Aires.^[2]

In 1966, Levrero wrote his first novel La ciudad (The City).^[5] He claimed the book was his attempt to "translate Kafka into Uruguayan". Published in 1970, the novel became part of what he described as an "involuntary trilogy" along with París (Paris) (1980) and El lugar (The Place) (1982).^[1] By the 1980s, Levrero was gaining more mainstream recognition after receiving an award for his novella Desplazamientos (Displacements).^[4]

Levrero received a Guggenheim Grant in 2000 to finish work on a project he had begun in 1984 that he called La novela luminosa (The Luminous Novel).^[6] Intended to be an account of a transcendental experience, the posthumously published work ended up as a composite of a diary detailing failed attempts at writing the novel and unedited chapters of the incomplete novel.^[6] It is widely regarded as his masterpiece.^[5]

Levrero died in Montevideo in 2004.^[1]

Levrero's work has inspired Latin American writers such as Rodolfo Fogwill, César Aira and Alejandro Zambra.^[7]

Work

Novels

La ciudad, 1970
Diario de un canalla/Burdeos, 1972
París, 1980
El lugar, 1982
Fauna/Desplazamientos, 1987
La Banda del Ciempiés, 1989
El alma de Gardel, 1996
El discurso vacío, 1996
Dejen todo en mis manos, 1998
La novela luminosa, 2005
Trilogía involuntaria (includes La ciudad, París, and El lugar), 2008
Nick Carter se divierte mientras el lector es asesinado y yo agonizo y otras novelas, 2012
La Banda del Ciempiés, 2015

Short story collections

La máquina de pensar en Gladys, 1970 (“The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine”. 2024)
Todo el tiempo, 1982
Aguas salobres, 1983
Los muertos, 1986
Espacios libres, 1987
El portero y el otro, 1992
Ya que estamos, 2001
Los carros de fuego, 2003
Cuentos completos, 2019

Comic books

Santo Varón/I, with artwork by Lizán, 1986
Los profesionales, with artwork by Lizán, 1988
Historietas reunidas de Jorge Varlotta, 2016

Other writings

Manual de parapsicología, 1978
Caza de conejos, 1986 (reissued in 2012)
Irrupciones I, 2001
Irrupciones II, 2001

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Thirlwell, Adam (7 March 2020). "It's still not right". London Review of Books. Vol. 42, no. 6. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
^ ^a ^b ^c Lockhart, Daniel (2004). Latin American Science Fiction Writers : An A-to-Z Guide. Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 113–114. ISBN 9780313305535.
^ Cummins, Anthony (30 June 2019). "Empty Words review – riddling but enticing". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Flores, Angel (1992). Spanish American authors : the twentieth century. Internet Archive. New York : Wilson. p. 476. ISBN 978-0-8242-0806-6.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e McDermott, Annie (15 May 2019). "On Translating Mario Levrero, The Kafka of Uruguay". Literary Hub. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
^ ^a ^b Thirlwell, Adam (3 August 2021). "This Novel Is a Record of Its Own Failure. Somehow It Succeeds". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
^ "Mario Levrero in Conversation with Mario Levrero". Believer Magazine. Retrieved 10 August 2021.