THE KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMANReviewManuel Puig’s most famous novel was published in 1976 by Editorial Seix Barral S.A.With several subsequent editions. This book was made famous because it was the basis for a Broadway play and it was made into a motion picture both of them with great success. This is 237 page novel structured around a device used by many authors reaching as far back as The one thousand and one nights. Two interlocutors in a dialogue where one of them is telling enticing stories in installments to the other one leaving him on edge, the listener is always asking for more. The novel deals with several basic themes and weaves a story around them. The main theme is Homosexuality in its many faces. Two inmates find themselves in the same prison cell in Argentina’s capital city, Buenos Aires. One is serving a sentence for sexual assault on a boy and the other one is a political dissident with underground connections imprisoned for urban guerrilla actions. The book exposes the dramatic differences between them in their approach to life and living. Molina, the gay narrator, tells elaborate stories to Valentin, the political prisoner. The stories are told by Molina as the author’s vehicle in an effort to desensitize a straight macho man of his natural disgust with homosexuality. Stories like the woman who turns into a panther when kissed or the blind man who is looking for companionship in a peasant maid or the elderly spinster waiting for her fiancée who died in the war, all illustrate the author’s premise that love is love is love; the most sublime of human emotions transcends beyond gender identities and redeems itself because of its selfless nature. Love for the sake of love without expecting anything in return. Many footnotes in the text are annotated revealing early twentieth century psychiatric theories; with authoritative quotes from scientific articles on the development of gender identity and the futility of fighting against one’s nature. The novel also illustrates deceit and treason when the reader realizes Molina was planted in the same cell with Valentin to help the prison warden extract vital information about the city’s underground revolutionary movement and the identity of its leaders. The prison provides special treatment to Molina, the homosexual, in secret cooperation with the prison warden in exchange for a shorter sentence. The will of Valentin is worn out with special treats, such as food brought in from outside, supposedly by Molina’s mother and with the selfless attention Molina provides to Valentin who is frequently ill with a stomach condition, a result of poison being added to his food on purpose by the warden. The stories narrated by Molina are in themselves priceless works of art. Short stories with lush details about vestiments, decorations, emotions etc, etc. Short stories masterfully told with the romantic sensitivity of a marginated, lonely, gay man; longing for his mother and his estranged lover. His story telling is a metaphor for art and literature, how they constitute an escape for the mind from its worldly prison. The point is, one’s mind can travel far and wide and turn adversity into advantage with creativity. Although he is in jail, Molina’s spirit travels the world in time and space. Molina is as far as anyone could be from becoming a guerrilla fighter and joining the process of rebellion against the establishment. Marxism, communism, social conscience, are the motives that consume Valentin and for which he has sacrificed his life. The miracle of the book is that as the saying goes, if you don’t like a man, it is more a reason to get to know him. The characters blend in such a way that Valentin accepts and becomes very close physically with Molina despite his initial repugnance of homosexuality and Molina upon leaving the prison early, his sentence commuted, attempts to join the underground revolutionary group that Valentin belonged to. In the end death appears and claims the life of Molina, the main character who is a bewitching individual with extreme sensibility and capacity for love. In a failed attempt to join Valentin’s guerrilla group, Molina is killed by the police and Valentin’s friends escape. In their deplorable conditions in their cell, the inmates have moments of duress and disorientation that allow the author to insert segments of surreal prose, monologues in dreams, dealing with the tragedy of the human condition. The elemental wish of all humans, to love and be loved
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