A Man in parentheses:

Portrait of Mario Levrero

Dr. Maximiliano Crespi

CTCL/IdIHCS (UNLP-CONICET) / ANPCyT

All that is left of a man is that which makes us think of his name and

his work; that is, that which, to our eyes, makes him a sign of admiration,

of rejection, or of indifference. This idea can be traced to a beautiful text

by Paul Valéry dedicated to Marcel Schwob, but is certainly not far from

the literary sensibility of a contemporary biographer like Mauro

Libertella. As proof, one need only read the first pages of Un hombre entre

paréntesis [A man in parentheses], where, upon consigning a diverse

inventory of objects found in the last apartment inhabited by Mario

Levrero, with simple acuity, he writes: “¿Qué nos dicen los objetos que

no nos pueden decir las personas, que no terminan de sugerir los hechos?”

[What do objects tell us that people cannot, that do not cease to suggest

the facts?]. Because of its rhetorical aspect, the question might seem

superficial; but it isn’t. Objects, texts, stories, images, and landscapes can

take on a life of their own provided that we know how to recover a certain
existencial connection between them. That coherence, which Valéry had

already predicted, owes as much to the actual material from the past as it

does to the thought process that brings it about.

Like in a Newton disc, where speed proves to us that white is made

up of the seven colors of the rainbow, within the brief but precise

biographical profile sketched out by Libertella is the framework of a

story—that is, a narrative structure—which turns an unorganized and

unfocused combination of facts, references, scenes, and curious anecdotes

into a living and sentient being: a human Levrero, perhaps even too

human.

The synopsis of the story articulates, in an elegant mosaic of scenes,

38 short chapters (plus one final chapter dedicated to the “Proust

Questionnaire” that Mario Levrero responded to for the newspaper El

Observador on October 19, 1997) and returns to the image of “un hombre

entre paréntesis” [a man in parentheses] that is consistently exposed in his

indecisions and in his aesthetic and existential contradictions. In narrative

terms, Libertella’s is truly remarkable, not only for the architectural and

structural arrangement of the biographical short story, but also for the

impeccable skill he displays in assembling—economically and

objectively—a heterogenous cluster of facts, observations, opinions,

rumors, and versions (some in dissent and other in open contradiction), in

short: the remainder of a plural memory, fragmented and disseminated in

an assortment of voices, signs, and registers.

The general composition allows for an understanding of the true

complexity of a real man, whom many press profiles tend to simplify in

the constitution of a myth. Libertella’s narrative does not leave out his

infancy of austerity (a childhood marked by a heart murmur and by a

mother who protected him from the harshness of real life while nurturing

his passion for literature), the difficulties of adapting to schools and to his

own family structure, his child-like emotional fragility, his capricious

personality, his puerile passions, his mistrust, and his striking political

foolishness, his inability to confront the death of his parents, the tender,

recurring, and somewhat pathetic romantic enthusiasm (whose disillusion

always unleashed an escape, symbolic or real, in Levrero), the brooding

obsessive disruption that surfaced in his compulsive collector personality,

his phobias, his chicanery, and his obvious incomprehension in the face

of works by the great names of the “Critical Generation.” But neither does

it fail to describe, with a certain epicness, the secret nobility of this man

who confronted daily life “con lo mínimo” [with the least], his

determination to remove himself from the stability offered by the petite

bourgeois labor regime and dedicate himself “por entero” [entirely] to

literature, the generosity to devote himself to conversation and bring to

light from each dialogue the truth in the words of others (in the same way

that he was able to find literature in the printed word of the “libros

baratos” [cheap books] that he piled in his “raquítica biblioteca” [rickety

library]), the courage to, at an advanced age (and as if confirming

Adorno’s theses about the “estilo tardío” [late style]), abandon the learned

generic formulas and detach himself from conventionally incorporated

resources to give “un vuelco dramático” [a dramatic overturning] to his

literary project and immerse himself in this “nuevo territorio” [new

territory] from which, finally and miraculously, he would produce two

exceptional works, Empty Words and La novela luminosa [The luminous

novel]. The general composition allows for an understanding of the true

complexity of a real man, whom many press profiles tend to simplify in

the constitution of a myth. Libertella’s narrative does not leave out his

infancy of austerity (a childhood marked by a heart murmur and by a

mother who protected him from the harshness of real life while nurturing

his passion for literature), the difficulties of adapting to schools and to his

own family structure, his child-like emotional fragility, his capricious

personality, his puerile passions, his mistrust, and his striking political

foolishness, his inability to confront the death of his parents, the tender,

recurring, and somewhat pathetic romantic enthusiasm (whose disillusion

always unleashed an escape, symbolic or real, in Levrero), the brooding

obsessive disruption that surfaced in his compulsive collector personality,

his phobias, his chicanery, and his obvious incomprehension in the face

of works by the great names of the “Critical Generation.” But neither does

it fail to describe, with a certain epicness, the secret nobility of this man

who confronted daily life “con lo mínimo” [with the least], his

determination to remove himself from the stability offered by the petite

bourgeois labor regime and dedicate himself “por entero” [entirely] to

literature, the generosity to devote himself to conversation and bring to

light from each dialogue the truth in the words of others (in the same way

that he was able to find literature in the printed word of the “libros

baratos” [cheap books] that he piled in his “raquítica biblioteca” [rickety

library]), the courage to, at an advanced age (and as if confirming

Adorno’s theses about the “estilo tardío” [late style]), abandon the learned

generic formulas and detach himself from conventionally incorporated

resources to give “un vuelco dramático” [a dramatic overturning] to his

literary project and immerse himself in this “nuevo territorio” [new

territory] from which, finally and miraculously, he would produce two

exceptional works, Empty Words and La novela luminosa [The luminous

novel]. But neither does it fail to describe, with a certain epicness, the

secret nobility of this man who confronted daily life “con lo mínimo”

[with the least], his determination to remove himself from the stability
offered by the petite bourgeois labor regime and dedicate himself “por

entero” [entirely] to literature, the generosity to devote himself to

conversation and bring to light from each dialogue the truth in the words

of others (in the same way that he was able to find literature in the printed

word of the “libros baratos” [cheap books] that he piled in his “raquítica

biblioteca” [rickety library]), the courage to, at an advanced age (and as

if confirming Adorno’s theses about the “estilo tardío” [late style]),

abandon the learned generic formulas and detach himself from

conventionally incorporated resources to give “un vuelco dramático” [a

dramatic overturning] to his literary project and immerse himself in this

“nuevo territorio” [new territory] from which, finally and miraculously,

he would produce two exceptional works, Empty Words and La novela

luminosa [The luminous novel].

Like in El estilo de los otros [The style of the others], the notable

volume of “conversaciones con escritores contemporáneos de América

Latina” [conversations with contemporary writers from Latin America]

(also edited by Leila Guierriero for the Universidad Diego Portales),

Libertella shows his passion for curiosity, detail, anecdotes, the negligible

gestures from which an undreamed truth oftentimes arises. When the

interlocutor or the information is confronted by evidence, when the story

threatens to get bogged down in the mark of a predictable image (whether

in a “negativo” [negative] or “positivo” [positive] sense), the biographer

steps aside: he changes the subject, the point of view, or the object of

attention. Like his interviews, his attractive portrait follows, in effect, an

inescapable ethical principle: to make the character exist, not to judge

him. The reason is obvious and, like Valéry, Libertella never loses sight

of it: where certainty takes precedence, what ends up being killed is

desire. In the truth of the Deleuzian passion, the grace of his singular style

and the extemporaneous nature of his writing are cemented.