Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman His Life and Fictions Hardcover - 2000

From the publisher

Manuel Puig (1932-1990), Argentinian author of Kiss of the Spider Woman and pioneer of high camp, stands atone in the pantheon of contemporary Latin American literature. Strongly influenced by Hollywood films of the thirties and forties, his many-layered novels and prays integrate serious fiction and popular culture, mixing political and sexual themes with B-movie scenarios. When his first two novels were published in the rate 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 left, though -- even by writers who had dismissed him -- and by the time the firm 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 mate 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.