"A pair of armchairs..."

In 2000 Mario Levrero receives a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation to finish a writing project. He comes to think of it as “the luminous novel.”

In his “diary of the grant,” a running prologue to what might be the novel, Levrero chronicles a bit of trouble getting going. His apartment, he soon surmises, is holding him back.

“A living space set up like an office,” desks, tables, the computer, plug sockets, “everything there to encourage work.”

A solution may be as near as a neighbourhood furniture shop (where the scraggly-bearded scribbler-recluse is at first treated as if homeless in need of rest…).

“One of the first things I did with … half of the grant money,” Levrero explains, “was buy myself a pair of armchairs . . .

One chair was perfect for reading . . .

the other was perfect for resting and relaxing.”*

* Mario Levrero, The Luminous Novel, translated by Annie McDermott (And Other Stories, 2021; originally La novela luminosa [2005]), 22.

Both watercolours (by the author) may now belong to Henry Cowles. For, upon following me into Levrerolandia, Henry kept at me: “the armchairs, the armchairs…”