“NOTHING DOESN’T MEAN NOTHING”: NARRATIVE IMMATERIALITY AND THE CONFIGURATIONS OF ABSENCE IN NADA ME FALTARÁ

Abstract

Nada me faltará (2010), the sixth novel written by Lourenço Mutarelli, is a gaping narrative, constructed through the intercalation of voices that are not always directly referenced in the text. The novel, in fact, is a series of dialogues and scenes, without the explicit weaving of a narrator, revealing signs os absence that spread throughout the book, from the choice of the novel’s title to the construction of the language used in the narrative, including the verb-visual composition of its pages. Based on these procedures, Nada me faltará raises questions about the nature of the novelistic form, the mechanisms used to configure these absences and how the theme permeates the book in various instances. Finally, this article reveals that, although there is no explicit narrative voice in the novel, the story is told by an “arranger” (Hayman, 1982), who arranges the scenes and chapters in a certain way, using the montage method (Eisenstein, 2002). This arranger widens the gaps and emphasizes the materiality of the page, forcing the reader to participate more. We have, therefore, shown that the sign of absence, besides being a key to reading, is both a theme and na aesthetic procedure used throughout the novel.