Customer Reviews

Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman : His Life and Fictions

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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.

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

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.