Manuel Puig

This article is about the Argentine author. For other uses, see Puig (disambiguation).
Manuel Puig

Manuel Puig
Born (1932-12-28)December 28, 1932
General Villegas, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
Died July 22, 1990(1990-07-22) (aged 57)
Cuernavaca, Mexico
Occupation Novelist, screenwriter
Nationality Argentinian
Literary movement Postboom, Post-modernist

Manuel Puig (born Juan Manuel Puig Delledonne) (December 28, 1932 – July 22, 1990) was an Argentine author.

Among his best-known novels are La traición de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was adapted as the film Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), directed by the Argentine-Brazilian director Héctor Babenco; and as the Broadway musical Kiss of the Spider Woman (1993).

Early life, education and early career

Puig was born in General Villegas, Buenos Aires Province. After unsuccessfully studying architecture in the University of Buenos Aires, he began working as a film archivist and editor in the city of Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter to write television shows and movies. His career as a screenwriter never took off, however.

Writing career

In the 1960s, he moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, La traición de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies and also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña).

Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools.

Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life. In 1989, Puig moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died in 1990. In the official biography, Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction, his close friend Suzanne Jill Levine writes that Puig had been in pain for a few days prior to being admitted to a hospital, where he was told that his gallbladder was inflamed and would have to be taken out. After the surgery, while Puig was recovering, he began to choke and gasp. The medical team was unable to help Puig. His lungs had filled with fluid, and he died of a heart attack at 4:55 a.m. on July 22, 1990.[1]

The 2004 film Vereda Tropical, directed by Javier Torres, depicts the period when Puig lived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The writer's role is played by the actor Fabio Aste.

Work

Critics such as Pamela Bacarisse divides Puig's work into two parts: his early novels, which "attracted an enormous audience by weaving into his narratives the artistic 'sub-products' of mass culture"; and his later books which have "lost their popular appeal" as they evidence "a depressing, even unpalatable, vision of life, no longer even superficially sweetened by palliatives as the mass-media elements are left behind".[2]

Three translations of his work have been reprinted by Dalkey Archive Press:

List of works

Novels

Plays and screenplays

See also

References

  1. ↑ Levine 2000, p. 377
  2. ↑ Bacarisse 1988, p. 4

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Manuel Puig.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, February 05, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.