The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine

by Mario Levrero, Annie McDermott (translator), Kit Schluter (translator)

Widely viewed as one of the most inventive bodies of work from 20th-century Uruguay, Mario Levrero's writing is distinguished by its bounteous imagination. In none other of the author's books is this imagination so clearly on display as in The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine, his first book of stories. It gathers a variety of Levrero's earliest and most formally inventive publications, ranging from dazzling single paragraph micro-fictions à la Donald Barthelme, to adventurous Lewis Carroll-esque tales of forty pages' length.
From the shocking surreal twists of 'Street of the Beggars' to the Escher-like grammatical maze of 'The Boarding House' to the pseudo-fairy tale classic 'The Basement', this book explores uncanny domestic spaces, using the structures of the stories themselves as tools for re-inventing narrative possibility.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Latin American, Literature

176 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2024

About the author

Jorge Mario Varlotta Levrero, más conocido como Mario Levrero fue un escritor, fotógrafo, librero, guionista de cómics, columnista, humorista, creador de crucigramas y juegos de ingenio uruguayo. En sus últimos años de vida dirigió un taller literario.

Jorge Mario Varlotta Levrero, born in Montevideo in 1940 and died there in 2004. Before becaming a cult writer and being considered as a master by many of the best writers in Latin America, Levrero first was a photographer, bookseller comics script writer, humorist, crossword author, creator of brain games. In his later years, he directed a literary workshop.

Levrero’s writing, structured around humour and unease, takes the form of a clean prose based on the psychological that has been characterized as “introspective realism”. His major work La novela luminosa was released posthumously. Another of his most remarkable novels was the involuntary trilogy, formed by the titles La ciudad, El lugar and París

Also, he authored an extensive body of literary work which includes journalistic writing (some of the best articles are to be found in Irrupciones I and Irrupciones II), short stories, novels and essays.

Levrero hated interviews and prologues, loved cinema, he was so interested in self-hypnosis, believed in telepathic phenomena, read about Zen, addicted to computers, loved science, hated being addressed in the “usted” form, could not abide solemnity in general, read detective novels even at breakfast.

Reviews

[Matthew Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Levrero is an 'underground' classic of Latin American literature who is back now thanks to & Other Stories, who has joined the likes of Fitzcarraldo and Lolli as one of my top independent publishers. Most of these stories were written in the 1960s and Levrero's style is akin to Borges (which is perhaps always predictable to say of Latin American writers) and Calvino. I've seen him referred to as Kafkaesque but I disagree; a lot of Levrero's work lacked the terror of Kafka. They were more fable than bureaucratic nightmares, and in that regard, reminded me more of Calvino. There are trippy fairy tales about locked rooms and basements in impossibly large houses, a man takes apart his lighter to discover its fault only to end up walking down a street inside what was once his lighter, a man invites a travelling salesperson and a circus unwittingly into his house, a strange jelly is the backdrop of a confusing seemingly apocalyptic story, and, of course, the titular story, "The Thinking-About-Gladys-Machine" and its "Negative" version at the back of the volume, poses a number of questions about the nature of Levrero's strange B-side of reality (to steal a phrase I once read on the back of a Agustín Fernández Mallo novel).

[Arno Vlierberghe · Rating 4 out of 5]

'I hesitated for just a moment, faced with the majesty of the dense forest that stood before my eyes - gloomy, imposing, mysterious. Then, resolutely, I started walking in, and kept walking until, finally, I was lost.'

[Rachel Louise Atkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really striking, inventive, Borgesian stories. These are the kind of eerie tales that I love to read in a collection and I’m so glad I finally got round to it. I definitely recommend this if you are a fan of proto-Latin American magic realism type stories with a mix of surrealism and philosophy.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read a short story collection quite like this one. Stories about my favorite kinds of weirdos: the obsessive-compulsive, the recluse, the stubborn.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

tl;dr the nonsense-labyrinth of Mario Levrero’s dream logic is a riotous walkthrough tour through the absurdities of human nature

I hesitated for just a moment, faced with the majesty of the dense forest that stood before my eyes – gloomy, imposing, mysterious. Then, I started walking in, and kept walking until, finally, I was lost. (p. 20, from “One Way Story No. 2”)

My first question was, “What the fuck do you mean by a ‘thinking-about-gladys machine’?” I read the opening story, less than a page-long, to hopefully find out the answer. Nope! In fact, only more questions, namely: why is his house coming down at the end? Who is this man, and who is Gladys, and why is there a machine ‘humming quietly’ to achieve this task?

The askew experience of reading this collection of short fiction from Uruguayan author Mario Levrero feels like a walkthrough tour through the absurdities of human nature; it’s odd, entertaining, has surprising depth, and a healthy helping of laugh-out-loud moments.

In the period during which the stories of La máquina were written, Uruguay was facing some serious political upheaval, their government slipping further and further into a state of military democracy. The sense of isolation, of insanity, that “this can’t be happening” is completely tangible in this collection, and manifests in a number of ways.

The first tale describes a narrator’s meticulous routine for making sure his house is in order before he sleeps, with just a brief mention of the titular device. The checklist-like nature of this tale is tinged with paranoia, the mystery of the device is quickly glossed over, and then without warning, the house “falls down”. This can be interpreted in a number of ways: is the machine an encapsulation of anxiety, and the house ‘falling down’ a loss of control and order? But after learning about the political upheaval of the era, my reading of this story changed, as well as others.

We’re taken through various slices-of-life of differing levels of absurdity: a jelly-apocalypse, the inner world of a lighter, an incredible pinhole view through the boards of an attic. Each story says something about the effect of dealing with increasingly odd and ever-mounting circumstances. Some narrators are more successful than others, occasionally escaping their problems or fully succumbing to them. Levrero’s scenes are strange, absurd, and often inexplicable, but I always had at least one clear interpretation of each.

I really enjoyed “The Basement”, which I read (in one way) as an allegory for family secrets. The narrator gets old trying to find out what’s in “the basement”, trying first to consult his family members, then going to miscellaneous external parties (the gardener, a creature called the “iron-swallower”, a bug) to complete the requisite steps to unlocking the pesky padlock. The historical context of La máquina’s era also colors this reading (is the family secret related to some level of complicity with dictatorship?) or alters it altogether (is it a portrayal of the arduous path to confronting the truth?).

The most remarkable thing about The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine is its assuredness; the stories are hilarious and absurd (“That Green Liquid” is a perfect punchline), yet somehow grounded and believable.

It’s a perfect mirror to the current times as well – who would believe that the most powerful nation in the world is slipping further and further into, not just fascism, but when added together with the AI slop killing our planet, the willful ignorance that is causing millions of people to lose access to food, and the flagrant gaslighting every step of the way, sum up to the stupidest form of fascism conceivable. Life doesn’t feel too far off of our houses falling down, circuses invading our living rooms, and a killer jelly spreading throughout the world to get us all. Sometimes all you can do is laugh.

[Liam McParland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely Direct prose, notes on time spent in pursuit of a different life. So many of these characters pass years wandering, searching, scraping a tiny hole in the edge of their “real life”. Also love the story of its writing - feverish years by the seaside, then decades wondering/wandering about the process, “lightning in a bottle”. Need to read the Luminous Novel one of these days.

Highlights for me -
The Abandoned House
Jelly (feels a lot like Dhalgren? But less so)

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird and wonderful stories. A touch of Roald Dahl but not going all the way there. A wonderful discovery, will be ordering Levrero’s novels immediately:)

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mario Levrero from Uruguay, 1940-2004

British literary critic Georgina Fooks concludes her review of this collection of Mario Levrero’s short stories thusly:

"To summarize a talent like this is to fail: Levrero’s imaginary roves widely and reaches far into the depths of the unconscious, and to categorize him as simply another writer of the fantastic is to delimit an interpretation of his work that might close the reader off to the chance encounter that each page offers."

Georgina Fooks’s observation is so, so accurate: Mario Levrero defies neat categories or definitions of any stripe. In fact, I’ve never read anything like The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine, in which each of the eleven stories (three long and eight very short) completely took me by surprise. One cannot emphasize this enough: Mario Levrero’s boundlessness serves as an invitation for each of us to—as Ms. Fooks puts it—"imagine what might happen when we let reality be its strangest self."

And the reality in these tales can be very strange. I'll share a taste of just how strange by focusing on a trio (one long and two short) from the collection.

JELLY
The narrator wakes up in what could be a dilapidated building in a rundown city park, surrounded by a crowd of other men and women. We're not given enough information to pin down exactly where he is, what he's doing, or why he's there. Those familiar with Mario Levrero's earlier Involuntary Trilogy (The City, The Place, Paris) will recognize the author's tendency to create settings that are completely destabilizing for both the protagonist and the reader.

Accordingly, the tale's narrator—whose name we eventually learn is Marco—appears disoriented, and we, as readers, share in this disorientation, an unsettling state that persists as we turn the pages. The presence deep into this Levrero forty-pager of a pile of naked corpses, along with the fact that Marco cannot sleep on top of other bodies, reinforces this sense of destabilization on every imaginable level—creating a world of nightmarish space, arbitrary laws and rules, and dissolved boundaries between the public and the private.

Keeping to the spirit of imagining what might happen when we let reality be its strangest self, I'll link my comments with specific direct quotes from the Uruguayan author's singular tale.

“Around midday I went to the esplanade, less to see the blind people than to get some shade, though the blind people are funny, the way they lead each other around and then break into fights.”

Along with blind people, other groups roam this unnamed city: flocks of mutants (one leg, three arms, eyes everywhere, edging forward like beetles), invalids, fat women, and lame people. One reviewer called Jelly a dystopia, and another referred to it as an apocalypse. Actually, I think both labels are off the mark, as Mario Levrero's powerful imagination conjures up a city that defies easy pigeonholing.

“There was an argument, and eventually we agreed to go the next day, and to widen the scope to include alcohol as well. I liked the sound of that, because I needed alcohol, and because I saw some unease in the circle. I thought something might yet be done with the group. It's infuriating to see people who have so much in common going to waste.”

Marco displays a social consciousness, showing concern for his group. What type of group is he a part of? We're never given a clear answer but his need for alcohol and the group's searching for alcohol suggest that his circle of friends might be the city's homeless outcasts.

“It's spreading,” I thought, though the jelly had stopped worrying me a long time ago. Meaning that I didn't say it sadly, as you might expect. It was just an observation.”

The jelly is a large, aggressive, oozing substance—vast enough to fill city streets. Where did it come from? Was it a consequence of environmental catastrophe? A manifestation of Lovecraftian supernatural horror? And how is it linked to what Marco calls the “churn-up”? Any semblance of an answer is not forthcoming.

“Sllt,” said Ulises. He started that Joyce thing again: he knew it off by heart.”

Here we have the sole cultural reference in the entire tale. I suspect Levrero included this snip as a point of contrast, to underscore the overwhelming experience of the city is one devoid of refinement, literature, and the fine arts.

“I flung the money down on the pavement, which set off a great brawl in the churn-up, people killing each other. I broke the window with my fists and got covered in cuts.”

Such extreme violence among people in desperate need of money could occur in a number of large cities across the globe. Is the city in Jelly a dissolving construct, an exaggeration of much of our current urban landscapes? And do these people really want to strike out at the mass of jelly taking over their city but can't—therefore, in an act of transference, they take it out on each other?

“I left the pavement and made my way along the soft tarmac. My shoes kept sticking and it was hard to make progress People didn't understand and kept pointing and laughing. I walked among the piles of old wrecks sinking gradually into the tarmac, once automobiles, now immobile. Eventually I managed to tire myself out and went to get some sleep.”

Sounds like Mario is dealing with multiple versions of entropy. How will it all turn out? Levrero offers no reassuring answers, no stable ground to cling to. The city, the jelly, the churn-up—all remain in flux, shifting and expanding like the strange logic of a dream. Marco's journey is neither heroic nor tragic but instead a restless drift through a world where meaning itself seems to be dissolving. In the end, Jelly resists resolution as much as it resists classification, standing as a perfect example of Levrero’s ability to construct narratives that unsettle, surprise, and evade any fixed interpretation.

THE THINKING-ABOUT-GLADYS MACHINE
The narrator, an obsessive-compulsive Mister Fusspot, makes absolutely sure everything is in perfect order in his small house before bed—his windows open just so, the polyester shirt he plans to wear in the morning perfectly pressed, the knobs of his stove set at zero. But then he tells us, “the thinking-about-Gladys machine was plugged in and purring away softly as usual.” What’s that all about? I’m reminded of Marcel Duchamp’s bachelor machine and Julio Cortázar’s short story Why We Love Glenda So Much.

Anyway, all seems to be going well for Mr. Fusspot . . . until we reach the final sentence. Ah, there’s a good reason Mario Levrero was called “the weird one.”

THE THINKING-ABOUT-GLADYS MACHINE (NEGATIVE)
Once again, our Mr. Fusspot makes his nightly rounds to ensure everything is in order. Though fussy Fusspot remains perfectly calm, what he describes in his house sounds like something out of a B horror movie—things like a horse with its throat slit, rotting in the tub, and an enormous snake emerging from his cuckoo clock before the narrative shifts to a bizarre sex scene laced with paranoia. How to end such a freaky two-page story? Vintage weird, unpredictable Mario Levrero.

Mario Levrero is among my very favorite authors. I encourage you to pick up a copy of this distinctive short story collection published by And Other Stories. Literature at its finest. Special thanks to Annie McDernott and Kit Schluter for their outstanding translation.

[Nick Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

My partner read this for a book group, didn’t know what to make of it and asked me what I thought. From the first story it reminded me of American writers such as Pynchon, Gaddis, John Barth, Brautigan, John Hawkes, Donald Barthelme. Barthelme is the most obvious because of the short story format. These are writers I was reading back in the 1980s and for a while was very excited by them – and it was when ‘postmodernism’ was becoming the trendy term and they were dripping in postmodernism – but over the years I’ve become less certain. The playful tone and messing around with literary form are fun, but many of the books and stories don’t really do anything. After a while, playing with literary conventions is not enough. And once I had made the comparison, The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine got trapped in my box…which might be unfair. But I had the same problems, I like the playfulness, but in the end I wondered, “What’s the point?” But maybe the playfulness is enough, that is the point. I don’t know much about Latin American literature and don’t know if Mario Levrero is part of a tradition. Magic realism? There isn’t much realism here. Maybe Borges, but without the interest in philosophy? Kafka would be the best bet as an inspiring influence. Many of the stories felt like fables, but with people and with a missing moral point. The final story felt like a science fiction dystopia, but with the usual science fiction explanations missing. The weirdness of the stories wasn’t just because weird things happen, but because they often seemed to point to or indicate meanings, but then the meanings weren’t there. I imagine if I had read The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine when I was in my twenties it would have had a much bigger impact, maybe catching my imagination in the way the work of Levrero’s American contemporaries did, but now, while thinking the book was fun, I can’t help thinking, “But what is it for?”

[Jacqueline Nyathi · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s something of the shaggy dog about some of these stories (mainly, I mean the story called *The Basement*, which is like *Alice in Wonderland* with a boy; but also *That Green Liquid*, about an at-home demonstration that turns absurd). The journey is the point; I didn’t always know what was going on, which is excellent in this case.

The title story, *The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine*, both starts the collection with its sunny side, and ends it with its much darker counterpart, *The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine (Negative)*. *Beggar Street* is nominally about a cigarette lighter, and has layer upon layer as Levrero takes readers deeper and deeper into a fanciful world. *One-Way Story No. 2* made me laugh out loud, because how *else* was the protagonist to deal with the dog they couldn’t get rid of? *The Abandoned House* is a complete trip, and I don’t quite know how to describe it, but maybe: a group of people keep doing stuff to a phenomenally haunted house, and it keeps doing stuff back. It’s brilliant. Another bizarre house is in *The Boarding House*; Escher would find so much joy in it. *The Stiff Corpse* is another laugh-out-loud story, but only when you’re not the hapless protagonist. And in *The Golden Reflections*, a man who’s never late for work gets lost in time.

Mainly, Levrero is having fun, and often at the expense of his characters and of readers—and I was happily carried along. A quick read, I found this extremely charming, superbly imaginative, and delightful. I know I’ll be re-reading it often.

Many thanks to And Other Stories and Edelweiss for early access.

[April Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this collection of stories; at the same time, I can see that it won't be for everyone. Levrero gets wordy, the prose borders on purple occasionally, and oh wow, this guy likes describing things! These are all things I'm fine with and generally like, but I know many readers don't, so keep that in mind if you're considering reading this book.
The stories are loosely connected to each other, some more obviously than others. I didn't necessarily like every character or every story - I could've done without the brutality of the unicorn story, but it does make you think twice about magical creatures, so there's that. I especially enjoyed the story of the basement, a magical realism fable of sorts that flowed beautifully and was extra delicious in my brain!
I'd definitely recommend this to readers who enjoy South American magical realism, who lean toward character-driven stories, and who enjoy a bit of floweriness in prose. This is a book I'd read again, and Levrero's writing was so enjoyable to me that I got two more books by the author before I was even halfway through this book!

[LW · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories in this book swing between incredible and poor. The poor ones aren't bad because of imagination, which Levrero has a deep supply of, but for the writing, which can be stifled, clunky, and will break the suspension of belief. When Levrero (or the translator) gets it right, the quality can strike that of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. Only one story did that, Beggar Street, but it was worth having gone through the book just for that piece. I'll be ripping out those four pages, and not returning to the rest. Maybe I'll keep Jelly, too.

The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine: 4/5
Beggar Street: 5/5
One-Way Story No. 2: 2/5
The Abandoned House: 1/5
The Basement: 1/5
The Green Liquid: 1/5
The Boarding House: 4/5
The Stiff Corpse: 2/5
Jelly: 4/5
The Golden Reflections: 2/5
The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine (Negative): 4/5

[Jacqueline Nyathi · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s something of the shaggy dog about some of these stories (mainly, I mean the story called The Basement, which is like Alice in Wonderland with a boy; but also That Green Liquid, about an at-home demonstration that turns absurd). The journey is the point; I didn’t always know what was going on, which is excellent in this case.

The title story, The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine, both starts the collection with its sunny side, and ends it with its much darker counterpart, The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine (Negative). Beggar Street is nominally about a cigarette lighter, and has layer upon layer as Levrero takes readers deeper and deeper into a fanciful world. One-Way Story No. 2 made me laugh out loud, because how else was the protagonist to deal with the dog they couldn’t get rid of? The Abandoned House is a complete trip, and I don’t quite know how to describe it, but maybe: a group of people keep doing stuff to a phenomenally haunted house, and it keeps doing stuff back. It’s brilliant. Another bizarre house is in The Boarding House; Escher would find so much joy in it. The Stiff Corpse is another laugh-out-loud story, but only when you’re not the hapless protagonist. And in The Golden Reflections, a man who’s never late for work gets lost in time.

Mainly, Levrero is having fun, and often at the expense of his characters and of readers—and I was happily carried along. A quick read, I found this extremely charming, superbly imaginative, and delightful. I know I’ll be re-reading it often.

Many thanks to And Other Stories and Edelweiss for early access.

[Nancy Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Levrero called himself a realist, which I take to mean he writes worlds that share a sense of his reality, a faithful account ofthe worlds he perceives. If you accept this -- and why on earth would he be anything but completely honest about it? -- you begin to appreciate how the minute, careful descriptions, especially of mechanisms and situations, the narrative of proliferating details, the driving, obsessive curiosity, become the stuff of realities by means of this absolutely unique voice, drawing you in, step by step.

[Luke McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly reminiscent of Borges and Kafka, but decidedly sillier. A lot of terrific stories, though at times I found the excessively wacky imagery to be overbearing. Loved the voice; dry, precise and playful. The freewheeling approach to structure was particularly inspiring. A lot of this feels like imaginative play.

[Michael Hopf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super very surreal and funny collection of short stories. Honestly hard to follow a lot of the time, but short enough where I could hit the next story if I got lost. Some of them hit and some of them missed. Still super interesting style

[Mathew Ruberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

hallucinegenic wild ride of little people coming out of sinks, rooms in houses where the spiders live, wise men floating in their prison of empty walls, livin' large amongst the ruins with an occasional visit to the churn-up.

how do they write this mess so matter of fact??? i love it

[Thomas Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

An unusual "narrative" style that doesn't resonate with me.

[Noah · Rating 2 out of 5]

colorful strange geometries of whimsy and claustrophobia

[John Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hills and valleys

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Levrevo manages to create domestic unease with such sophisticated refined language and weave in surrealism, humour, and a pace that just creeps up on you. Delightful little collection of stories, The Basement is a work of art.

Thank you to & Other Stories for the proof :)