Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman

Suzanne Jill Levine

"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 sixties, 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."--BOOK JACKET.