Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman : His Life and Fictions

by Suzanne Jill Levine

A biography of the flamboyant and often persecuted author of Kiss of the Spider Woman traces the remarkable life and career of Manuel Puig, an Argentinian banned by the Peronists and shunned by the left for his multi-layered, often erotic novels.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, LGBT

448 pages, Hardcover

First published July 12, 2000

About the author

Suzanne Jill Levine is a leading translator of Latin American literature, and professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara where she directs a Translation Studies doctoral program. Her scholarly and critical works include her award-winning literary biography Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman (FSG & Faber& Faber, 2000) and her groundbreaking book on the poetics of translation The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction (published in 1991 and reissued this year by Dalkey Archive Press, along with her classic translations of novels by Manuel Puig).

Her many honors include National Endowment for the Arts and NEH fellowship and research grants, the first PEN USA West Prize for Literary Translation (1989), the PEN American Center Career Achievement award (1996), and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. She has just completed a five volume project as general editor of the works of Borges for Penguin Classics.

(from http://www.complit.ucsb.edu/projects/...)

Reviews

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect biography of this remarkable and flamboyant Nobel prize nominee (1982). Manuel Puig, you are definitely missed. And I am going to read most of your work because you're fabulous and you believe in justice and happiness for everyone! :) This biography is a perfect fusion of both literary criticism and biographical information. And it's compulsively readable too. A perfect companion alongside his other novels. You'll never forget this man. A Bolano biography next, anyone? :)

[Julio César · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book got me really interested in Manuel Puig's life. I found out that there is an Archive, with his personal writings and drafts, which was held by Malé until her death in 2006; now it is under Graciela Goldchluk's and her team's custody in La Plata University (UNLP); and part of it is digitalized and available for everyone.
A truly and utterly brave writer.

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, if a little long, biography of Manuel Puig. Levine, who worked personally with him in the English translation of one of his novels, presents to the reader the life, unpretentious aims and legacy of this Argentine writer. She pays attention not only to the family life that would shape the future writer but also to his obsession with cinema and actresses that would leave an indelible mark in his personality and literary work. Levine also wants to give the reader all the context for Puig’s career, from the many (many!) writers, cinematographers, actors, and all sorts of public figures he met, befriended and antagonized, to the literary context that saw little place for him in their snobbish halls. She succeeds in making the reader understand the push/pull factors that took Puig all over the world as well as his place, even if largely unacknowledged, as part of the Latin American Boom. Definitely interesting but heavy at times with the names of all those Puig interacted with.