Manuel Puig (1932–1990)

Two men share a prison cell, the homosexual Molina imprisoned for "corruption of minors", and the revolutionary Valentin. They appear as polar opposites--Molina is ultra-effeminate and completely given to the typically "female" concerns with love and romance, while Valentin suppresses his emotions because only the combat for society matters, not the private life. Neither understands the other and yet gradually they become closer, so much so that each one ends up doing something "outside" his show more own character, for the sake of the other.

This is very much a study of homosexuality and gender where the political moment, Argentina's leaden, fascist seventies, only serves as a pretext to bring together in extended intimate dialogue people who would never be capable of it otherwise. Valentin seems to get the most out of the exchange, to have been nothing less than enlightened. One would like to think that Molina, in turn, was strengthened by Valentin's acceptance but this is less clear to me.

Puig's voluminous footnotes on the psychoanalitical and philosophical studies of homosexuality and gender are a pointer but also an obstacle. What is happening to the two men is outside "theory", which is dismally dated anyway.

Molina understands himself as a woman and refers to himself often in the female gender. He does not fall in love with homosexuals, only "real" men. It's interesting how at different times both characters express the more open, progressive view of the genders--for instance, Molina retorting that there is nothing wrong with being sensitive and gentle "like a woman" and that the world would be a better place if men were more "like women"; but later, it's Valentin who protests against Molina's notion that it's right, "womanly", to suffer in a relationship (including intercourse), that being humiliated is natural. Molina's influence makes Valentin gentler, and Valentin's makes Molina fight.

A beautiful book show less

Now here’s a Latin American novel that I would heartily recommend. Despite the fact that it deals with their endless fascination with what they term as ‘love’ (cf. Love in the Time of Cholera), it is written in the most individual style that I’ve yet come across from this area of the world.

Typically, works off the 1001 Books list from the continent of South America are either saccharine sop-fests of the likes of Allende (see here and here), metaphysical romps beyond the bounds of show more mortal comprehension (see Borges here and Paz here) or a combination of the two (see Garcia Marquez here).

It’s therefore extremely refreshing to see an author use some experimentation and actually play with the novel. Whatever else Puig must have experienced while writing this, he surely must have had moments of great delight. The vast array of viewpoints, styles, genres and approaches to chronology must have been great fun to put together.

The result is a novel about unrequited love (“What else?” I hear the Latino crowd say!) which intrigues the reader from the get go. Until the very end, you’re never actually sure how events have really unfolded, and it’s tantalising enough to tempt you to immediately start reading again.

I read the novel aloud to Mrs Arukiyomi (we always have one book like this on the go). However, because of the wide array of literary styles, this is not the ideal way to access the novel. Don’t do audio, read this off the page and be ready for a tale of young love and shattered ideals. show less

"So then the crowd, everyone in the world then looked at the fliers and yelled his name which was written on it, "Josemar! Josemar! Hurray for our new glory!" . . . He got to know other rich bitches, several rich bitches, he changed completely, was completely different. There they accepted him in their homes like a son. And his three years there were three years of triumph, and he earned a little money from soccer, isn't that true?" -Manuel Puig, Blood of Requited Love

Could that handsome show more stud in the above photo be none other than Josemar Ferreira from Manuel Puig’s Blood of Requited Love? Certainly a possibility, at least in Josemar's mind. However, since like many other narrators in Mr. Puig’s novels, there is such a yawning chasm between one’s romanticized self-image and one’s grueling, grinding day-to-day reality, the odds tend to be slim.

Welcome to the fiction of Manuel Puig. Not your typical Latin American boom novelist. At the opposite end of the literary spectrum from the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez or the metaphysical labyrinths of Jorge Luis Borges, Mr. Puig draws his inspiration primarily from Hollywood movies and kitschy pop culture.

Anybody familiar with the author’s Kiss of the Spider Woman will know nearly the entire book is written as a movie script-like dialogue between two men in a prison cell. Blood of Requited Love offers a variation on this form: there’s a dialogue between two people all right, but only one person does the speaking (usually María da Gloria, a young girl infatuated with Josemar), while, on the other side, Josemar refers to himself in the third person and offers his own stream-of-consciousness version of past events and happenings. Quite the unique novelistic experimentation on display. And please be aware Blood of Requited Love makes for a gritty, gritty read.

Back on the gulf between romanticized ideal and grungy reality. For Jean Franco’s New York Times book review in 1984 when the novel was originally published in English, there was the title Trapped in Machismo. Actually, by my reading, our sexually charged Brazilian lady’s man is snared and bound, stuck, blocked and trapped at every turn. Let me count the ways:

Dirt poor: Josemar was raised out on a farm, the third of eleven brothers and sisters, where the mother and father had barely enough money to feed and clothe their brood. Life was harsh; life was raw – no sooner did Josemar reach an age when he could contribute to the farm then he was put to work for long hours. Sensitivity to the finer things of life? Completely nonexistent.

Cultural poverty: The setting for the novel is 1960s Cocota, a distant suburb of Rio de Jenairo. Cocota is the typical ugly housing tract or small town - Hicksville, Deadsville, Dragsville, where the only culture is the growth on the neck of the local gas station attendant. Josemar is a world away from an opportunity to do things like visit a museum or attending live theater - string quartet music as alien as little green men from Mars. To compound the dreariness, Josemar works a drudge job repairing bathroom fixtures.

Macho clichés: Josemar comes across as nothing short of repugnant, coarse and crude when he talks about women, always in the most degrading ways. “He wanted to mount her, without mercy. And even if the female repents afterward, it’s too late, she’s got to enjoy it and she’s lost, she waits for the male to come back and mount her again.” Referring to sex as “doing their business” and how María de Gloria “owes it to him.” A prime example of the way Manuel Puig allows his characters to speak for themselves in their own voice.

Limited vocabulary, limited world: Josemar continually asks: “Is that clear?” as if he has a clearheaded awareness of his own life and those around him. Unfortunately, this muddled lady killer counts among his victims language itself beyond the level of grammar school. His head is filled with little more than fantasies about soccer, women, booze, cars and sex. What does become clear is Josemar is an unreliable narrator, living in his daydreams where he is forever the star on the soccer field and God’s gift to women in bed. It's as if Josemar’s imagination is locked in a cheap cardboard box; he’s barely one notch above illiterate and probably has never read a book in his life.

Saccharine pop culture: In 60s Cocota, the sappy pop music of Roberto Carlos is king. And the ultimate symbol of freedom for Josemar as for everyone else: owning a car. Feel the power of acceleration – just like having sex!

Revenge, resentment, hatred: Almost predictably, being the only white in the family (probably the child of another man), Josemar is on the receiving end of severe emotional and physical abuse and cruelty at the hands of his father, a violent, sometimes depressed alcoholic. One way Josemar responds to his father: shooting the family milk cow. Manuel Puig studied psychoanalytic theory and understood the power of transference. Such transference undoubtedly accounts for Josemar’s sadism toward animals, especially small animals and much of his treatment of women – he has a couple of illegitimate children with dark Azucena but shirks any responsibility, thinking men don’t have children, women do.

Perpetual adolescent -“What the fuck, the main thing is that he’s had fun, he’d put it good to her.” Josemar, stuck as the permanent, solipsistic fifteen year old. He’s addicted to cigarettes but curiously there is little mention in his stream of consciousness chatter of his intake of alcohol. Is this denial? Perhaps yet again another aspect of unreliable narrator - what he doesn't reveal.

The past: Is Josemar perpetually replaying tapes of the past? Well, not exactly the historical past but most likely a reworking of the past to suit his own ego, a past where he's always right and forever comes out on top. The novel’s Epilogue provides the clue: this last section repeats chunks of the first chapter word-for-word. There's the distinct possibility all of what we have read, all 200 pages of the book, is a series of tapes Josemar continually replays in his head. Thus, like being held captive in the coils of a giant boa constrictor, the past is forever tightening its deadly grip. If he was twenty in 1958, that would make him an eighty-year-old man today. I can imagine Josemar sitting on a rocking chair on his front porch in Cocota replaying these same tapes of his youth over and over and over again. What a trap! show less

[b:Kiss of the Spider Woman|588242|Kiss of the Spider Woman|Manuel Puig|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403179094l/588242._SY75_.jpg|765288] is told almost entirely in dialogue between two cellmates in an Argentinian jail, with reports and academic footnotes on the history of research into sexuality as occasional interjections. Although I'd heard of the title, I didn't know what to expect and was totally blown away. I read the whole novel in an show more afternoon and found it beautifully written, moving, and utterly compelling. Molina, jailed for gay sex, and Valentin, jailed for resisting the government, try to escape the claustrophobia of their cell by discussing cinema. Molina has an extraordinary memory for his favourite films and recounts them in spellbinding detail. As the cinematic narratives unfold, the reader slowly realises their subtextual significances.

I am honestly in awe of how instantly and effectively Puig immerses the reader using only dialogue. He demonstrates how two the very different men end up bonded by imprisonment. The novel doesn't lend itself to short quotes as the narrative flows like a genuine conversation, so you'll just have to take my word for it. I haven't read anything else quite like it, that so effortlessly spans the visceral and the existential within such a confined context. Molina and Valentin's discussions range across politics, gender, sexuality, love, and finding meaning in life. From within their cell, the reader gains a sense of their lives, the prison system they are trapped in, and how they've ended up there. Both characters are fascinating and sympathetic, trying to be kind and true to themselves amid inhumane conditions.

[b:Kiss of the Spider Woman|588242|Kiss of the Spider Woman|Manuel Puig|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403179094l/588242._SY75_.jpg|765288] is a beautiful, brutal, and brilliant novel, one of the best I've read so far this year. The ending is inevitable and heart-breaking. As with [b:Child of Fortune|1536879|Child of Fortune|Yūko Tsushima|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1184880371l/1536879._SY75_.jpg|1529013], though, I would have appreciated the inclusion of an afterword or translator's note in this new Penguin edition to provide some context. show less