Since his first anonymous appearance in "Algo se aproxima" until his last sighting in La Grande, Carlos Tomatis -recurring character in Juan Jose Saer's fiction-establishes himself as a metaphor of postmodern sterility, which is embodied in the melancholic figure of the writer without writing. Epigrammatic sarcasm, self-sufficient contempt and punitive fantasies reflect his melancholic and pendular (fever and geometry) personality, without giving up his view of literature as an autonomous realm of pure form. Bearing this in mind, the purpose of the article is to correlate the impossibility of the character to capture experience within fiction with Saer's own writing, which is distinguished by epiphanic hints and a stuttering drive that, through an obsessive punctuation, ends up by breaking up syntaxis.