Manuel Puig and the Spiderwoman: His Life and Fictions

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)