Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman : His Life and Fictions [Hardcover]

Suzanne Jill Levine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2000

A life-Starring the innovative and flamboyant novelist and playwright as himself.

Manuel Puig (1932-1990), Argentinian author of Kiss of the Spider Woman and pioneer of high camp, stands alone in the pantheon of contemporary Latin American literature. Strongly influenced by Hollywood films of the thirties and forties, his many-layered novels and plays integrate serious fiction and popular culture, mixing political and sexual themes with B-movie scenarios. When his first two novels were published in the late 1960s, they delighted the public but were dismissed as frivolous by the leftist intellectuals of the Boom; his third novel was banned by the Peronist government for irreverence. His influence was already felt, though-even by writers who had dismissed him-and by the time the film version of Kiss of the Spider Woman became a worldwide hit, he was a renowned literary figure.

Puig's way of life was as unconventional as his fiction: he spoke of himself in the female form in Spanish, renamed his friends for his favorite movie stars, referred to his young male devotees as "daughters," and, as a perennial expatriate, lived (often with his mother) everywhere from Rome to Rio de Janeiro. Suzanne Jill Levine, his principal English translator, draws upon years of friendship as well as copious research and interviews in her remarkable book, the first biography of the inimitable writer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The intricate links between politics, movies and life that are at the heart of Manuel Puig's 1976 novel The Kiss of the Spider Woman are also at the center of this engaging and illuminating critical biography of the late Argentinean author. Born to a middle-class family in 1932, Puig became obsessed with movies at an early age. When his plans to become a film director did not materialize, he turned to fiction writing and began to produce novels that were not only influenced by the themes in his favorite Hollywood movies, but examined the myriad ways in which movies affected human lives and culture. Levine, who was a friend of Puig's and worked closely with him on the English translations of his work, does a splendid job of delineating Puig's cultural influences--from novelist Julian Green to Freud and Hitchcock--and his political revulsion against Hitler and Juan Per?n. She convincingly argues that, as a novelist, Puig was as obsessed with politics as he was with popular culture and the imagination. Levine also astutely addresses Puig's homosexuality and the influence of both North and South American gay male culture on his writing, although she is stronger on detailing his relationship with his family than his intimate relationships. (Readers might turn to Jaime Manrique's 1998 Eminent Maricones for a more complete rendering of this side of Puig's life.) Puig's death in 1990, amid rumors of AIDS, cut short a startling career that Levine vividly brings to life. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

While Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman (adapted into both an Oscar-winning movie and a Tony-winning musical) remains his best known and most popular work, his influence is much more wide ranging. Using the techniques of pop art and colloquial language, he managed to break the stranglehold of the intellectual elite on Latin American letters. Born and raised in a hot, boring provincial town in the middle of the Argentinean pampas, Puig, who died in 1990, found early solace in the films his mother took him to almost every day. They provided a means of escape that had a profound effect on his later work, in terms of both content and style. In this first biography of Puig, his principal English translator, Levine (The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction), offers an intimate portrait of both the man and his work. She succeeds admirably in illuminating the forces that drove himDfrom the personal to the political. For the general American audience, Puig remains an obscure figure, but for those interested in Latin American literature who want to know more about the author of Spider Woman, this biography offers an excellent start. For academic and larger public library collections.DDavid W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, FL
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T) (July 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374281904
• ISBN-13: 978-0374281908
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,792,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Complete Chronology and Tantalizing Sketch, November 27, 2000

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J. McFarland "jbmcfar" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman : His Life and Fictions (Hardcover)

As a complete chronology of the life and work of Manuel Puig, this biography by one of his premiere English translators cannot be beaten and will be the definitive text for everybody to start with. Puig traveled widely, knew everybody (it seems) and was ready to move on whenever things got too hot. His tempestuousness and his literary ambitions come through here loud and clear. All fans of Puig's fabulous (in all senses) work will want to read this book to see what his work required of the man (or la woman as he referred to himself after his fateful meeting with Greta Garbo who spoke of herself in the third person as The Woman). Despite all that, and there is no doubt that this is a major achievement, I still yearned for more analysis of how Puig became the writer he was (his mastery of technique, his conscious choice of the self-reflective and collagist commentary of his best work). And although Levine rightly emphasizes Puig's sexual voracity for "straight" men, his self-image as "the woman" and his obsession with his mother, the repetition of those same explanations for many of the actions of this clearly complex man began to seem reductive and easy and to call for a fresh look below that received wisdom, if only to say, at last, that that was all there was.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Illuminating Biography of Manuel Puig by his 'Spider Woman', June 4, 2005

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Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Manuel Puig And The Spider Woman: His Life And Fictions (Paperback)

Suzanne Jill Levine was an intimate colleague, friend, devotee, and scholar of the late and much lamented brilliant Argentinean author Manuel Puig. So tied to his childhood history and obsessions with the movies of the 30s and 40s and so in tune with his idiosyncratic, peripatetic life style, Levine seems the perfect embodiment of Puig's hallowed 'spider woman', making her the perfect foil for committing his biography to public books.
Some would say the close proximity between Levine and Puig might not result in an accurately critical analysis of the artist's life and work, but Levine avoids that pious hagiography by showing us a three dimensional character more than other writers have been able to produce.

Puig was born in a poor sector of Argentina, the child of a tattered family, his only escape from the tragedy of everyday life was in his beloved movies - the art form that influenced his life and his creative output more than any other stimulus. Though he enjoyed rather early success as a writer after moving to Buenos Aires (and subsequently to Rome, Paris, London, New York, Sweden, etc), he eventually lived in Hollywood splendor in Rio de Janeiro where his most famous works were published and his reputation as Latin America's first Pop novelist was firmly established.

Puig lived in a cinematic world finding that the real world never really equaled the promise of the movie world. His sexual proclivities included his penchant for essentially unavailable straight men and though surrounded by devoted admirers, he could not escape the obsession that time was eroding and deteriorating his life in a way only explained by such delusions as that of, say, Oscar Wilde's 'Dorian Gray'.

But Levine has the sensitivity and intelligence to include detailed accounts of each of Puig's literary works, giving very valuable insights to his compulsion of writing 'The Kiss of the Spider Woman' first as a novel, then play, then movie, and ultimately as a Broadway musical. Such thorough knowledge and elegant writing style that Levine uses in dissecting the impact of this one work is indicative of the fullness of this fine biography. This is a book rich in color and flavor AND scholarship and for this reader it is the finest biography of the fascinating Manuel Puig yet published. Grady Harp, June 05

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A unique way of knowing this marvelous writer, September 19, 2000

By 

Rodrigo Hinzpeter K. (Chile) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman : His Life and Fictions (Hardcover)

El hecho de que haya sido la propia traductora de sus novelas al idioma ingles quien escribiera la primera biografia del escritor no es un mero dato, porque Jill Levine resulta ser tambien una perfecta traductora de su vida, de su pensamiento y de su sensibilidad, asi como tambien del ambiente y de la epoca en que vivio, y mas que eso, despierta el interes por leer todas las novelas del escritor, tan vigente en nuestra epoca: un visionario.