‘My graphological self-therapy’: scenes of writing and identity in Empty Words, by Mario Levrero

This article reflects on the scenes of writing present in Empty Words (2019), a novel by Uruguayan writer Mario Levrero. In particular, it analyses scenes in which the protagonist writes about the very act of writing, either as a therapeutic process—with a certain ironic distance, since he tries to correct aspects of his personality while improving his calligraphy—or as a way of confirming his identity as a writer. Writing practice in this and other works by Levrero takes on an important place, where the act of writing is always something to problematize. Levrero was a renowned Latin-American writer and teacher of creative writing in whose work, which is just beginning to be translated into English, it is possible to see how he understands writing as an eminently concrete, quotidian, and identitarian practice.