Pop Culture into Art: The Novels of Manuel Puig

Long acclaimed by Latin American critics, the Argentine novelist Manuel Puig became best known in this country for his novel Kiss of the Spider Woman. While Puig's seven novels are available in translation, an immense body of criticism and many of his most important interviews remain inaccessible to the non-Spanish reader.

Written especially for the English-speaking audience, this study analyzes aspects of Puig's novels, summarizing the most important criticism in Spanish, and offers a biographical sketch of the man, making available for the first time in English selections from the most informative interviews. Readings of each of Puig's novels combined with Lavers's overview of the criticism in Spanish provide new insights into one of the most original and profound bodies of fiction of any current writer.

Norman Lavers is Professor of English at Arkansas State University. Among his books are Jerzy Kosinski (Twayne, 1982) an the novel The Northwest Passage (New York: Fiction Collective, 1984).