The Argentine literary ingenuity, from Borges but also Samantha Schweblin has been and is revealed by very different voices such as himself Manuel Puig, whom today I bring to this space.
Grouping a whole host of great authors together by a trait as limiting as nationality has its labeling risks. But there is no doubt that so many good writers have made literature in Spanish a cradle for erudition or for neo-language, for existentialism made into an argument or for the greater glory of lyricism made into prose. An inexhaustible crucible in which Manuel Puig brings to the mix a new creative component conditioned by his status as a movie buff.
In any case, the continuous winks to the cinema are almost always excuses to delve into a bibliography of great characters in the most varied situations and settings.
Always intense dialogues as the best expressive way of the author to offer his concerns, his critical vision and his introspection in the recesses of the soul, where the reasons for the being of each character are found, with which the author ends up presenting us with an exciting mix between destiny and provisionality seen from the capacity to the inner change.
For the greater virtue of that encounter with such lively characters, Manuel Puig strip of the script of his novels. As if presented in scenarios that energize each plot, even in some of its most complex structures in its forays into its experimental literature. A real pleasure to get carried away by any of his novels.
Top 3 recommended novels by Manuel Puig
Painted mouths
Only Manuel Puig could make a light novel (which almost resembles a possible theater script in its epistolary structure) into a great intimate story. A plot with the fast-paced rhythm of a soap opera, but with a background that also addresses the bitterness of love and digs into the gardens of each house, where everyone buries miseries and secrets when both things are not the same.
Juan Carlos Etchepare died before reaching 30. Behind him he left the threads that link in the first instance the lives of Mabel, Nené, Elsa and Leonor.
The testimony of this heartthrob condemned in advance for his lifestyle ends up being a mess that brings out the worst in the inhabitants of a town turned into that microcosm that ends up gathering a multitude of the most intense human motivations, guided towards the destructive when nothing else it looks like a solution.
The kiss of spider women
A title that points to the surreal or at least the disconcerting and that in the end does not deceive. From the relationship of two prisoners, Molina and Valentín, the author launches into a complex dissertation that engages with cinema stereotypes while delving deeper, from his essay notes, into psychological aspects of his characters and sociological aspects by extension. .
The interaction between humans is always capable of generating new synthetic or transforming universes when the conditions are conducive to the opening of the soul to the open grave. In this brilliant story we approach the force of dialogue capable of everything, even manipulation.
The tropical night falls
Sometimes it seems as if Puig's characters occupy the spaces in which they disappear from the cameras or from the main chapters of other novels. Between each chapter, between each scenario, the protagonists of any story are necessarily alive, but no one knows what they do.
In this case, it would be to recover two women who have already been protagonists of their lives and who hide from the focus of the narrative and simply evoke the good morning of their little glories while they murmur about each other of those who pass in front of them with some other task, composing stories that no longer belong to them, neither by age, nor by time, nor by desire.
The two women, disgusted with life, with its arguments and its turns, open the doors of their soul wide for us. And that authenticity is as heartbreaking as it is exciting.
In the simple coexistence of the two sisters, we enjoyed carefree conversations, shockingly true. And when closing the novel, this time yes, we know that they are still there, somewhere, with their dimes and diretes between the vulgar and the transcendental about love, life and any other passions and drives.
I am a specialist in Puig and I agree with you that these are his three best books
Thanks, Ariana!