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University Microfilms International 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 USA SL John's Road, Tyler's Green High Wycombe, Bucks. England HP10 8HR 77-21,385 MALDONADO, Arraando, 1946- MANUEL FUIG: THE AESTHETICS OF CINEMATIC AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FICTION. The ISiiversity of Oklahoma, Ph.D., 1977 Literature, Latin American Xerox University Microfiims, Ann Arbor, Michigan48ios 0 1977 ARMANDO MALDONADO ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE UNIVERSITY OF OKIAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE MANUEL PUIG; THE.AESTHETICS OF CINEMATIC AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FICTION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY ARMANDO MALDONADO Norman, Oklahoma 1977 MANUEL PUIG: THE AESTHETICS OF CINEMATIC AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FICTION APPROVED BY %, l/iyyu/l DISSERTATION COMÎIITTEE ACKNOtilLBDGMENTS I gratefully acknowledge the help given me by Drs. Lowell Dunham, James Abbott and Seymour Feller. I am especially grateful to Dr. Mary Davis for her encouragement and suggestions throughout the writing of this dissertation. I owe major improvements in style and structure to her professionalism and dedication. A special thanks is due Dr. John Richard who continually inquired about the progress I was making. His constant faith in my ability shall not be forgotten. In times of stress and frustration, Barbara Ann has supported me in every way. Without her patience and understanding, this work would be unfinished. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION .................. 1 II. LA TRAICION DE RITA HAYWORTH ......... 13 III. BOQUITAS PINTADAS ...................... 64 IV. THE BUENOS AIRES A F F A I R ..................... 128 V. CONCLUSION ....................................... 172 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................... 179 Manuel Puig: The Aesthetics of Cinematic And Psychological Fiction CHAPTER 1 Introduction One of the most prominent aspects of modern fiction is its ability to re-direct the reader into a shared participation with the author into the potential discoveries possible in written language. Explorations of mythical structures like those of Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel Garcia Marquez or the dynamic replay of crude and sometimes frighteningly subhuman interactions like those of Mario Vargas Llosa bring the reader into contact with a verbalization that is successful only to the extent that it involves the reader with the narrated experience. The author no longer relays specific information to the reader through the medium of the literary work. It is symptomatic of current prose that the author does not want to give the reader any particular message. Writers for the most part attempt to construct a prose work which the reader can re-create and explore on his own terms without preoccupying himself with the author's intentions. The story, if there is one, can be restructured using an infinite number of angles so that the reader can continually remake and mold the story line. Likewise, if there is no story, the language becomes the focal point, and each reader must discover on a one- to-one basis within the text the hundreds of points of contact with the possibilities in the work. From James Joyce's Ulysses to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio's Le Procès-verbal, the indications are that language is being revolutionized as a point of departure for the reader and that the work does not exist as a fossilized structure for the reader to study and put aside. Carlos Fuentes perceptively analyzes the situation and states that "Nuestra literatura es verdaderamente revolucionaria en cuanto le niega al orden establecido el lexico que este quisiera y le opone el lenguaje de la alarma, la renovacion, el desorden y el humor. El lenguaje, en suma, de la ambiguedad: de la pluralidad de significados, de la constelacion de alusiones: de la apertura." ^ It is obvious that the opening leaves at times a big gap between the author's subconscious creation and the reader's redoing of the work. But this division in the approach to the work is, after all, what the new literature expects and welcomes, for it announces the new wave of objective correlation with the work. Of course, the new literature does not include every author nor does it rigidly confine the writers to a particular ^ Carlos Fuentes, Iæ nueva novela hispanoamericana (Mexico: Joaquin Mortiz, 1969), p. 32. 3 style. The fictional world is quite diverse in the different types of works being creates as well as the artists doing the creating. One of these new writers, the Argentine Manuel Puig, offers an interesting accumulation of material for analysis, material which does not seem, superficially at least, to have any close connection to that literature to which Carlos Fuentes addresses himself. The Mexican author proposes in his analysis of the possible death of the novel; Lo que ha muerto no es la novela, sino precisamente la forma burguesa de la . novela y su termine de referencia, el realismo, que supone un estilo descriptive y sicolôgico de observer a individuos en relaciones personales y sociales.... Inmersos en esta crisis, pero indicando ya el camino para salir de ella, varios grandes novelistas han demostrado que la muerte del realismo burgués solo anuncia el advenimiento de una realidad literaria mucho mas poderosa. Esta realidad no se expresa en la intro- speccion siquica o en la ilustracion de las relaciones de clase.... 2 Yet what Manuel Puig is most concerned with is (1) the effects of cinema, a social occurrence and problem, on people and (2) the underlying psychological problems of the characters he creates. In his bio­ graphical account, he recalls the year 1946; 2 Carlos Fuentes, p. 17, started secondary education as a boarder in Buenos Aires because there was nothing beyond the grammar school in Villegas. School was awful the children cruel. I missed my mother tremendously. The only consolation was the Sunday matinee at a first- run theatre: my very first was Mildred Pierce. Other favorites: Saratoga Trunk, Frenchman's Creek. Sensational discovery of Freud in Spellbound. 3 Of 1947 he says that he "became friends with a Jewish schoolmate, discussing Spellbound. Found out he knew everything about Freud." ^ This fascination with Freud was to reappear in his prose work. The "personal and social relationships" of which Carlos Fuentes speaks are the backbone of Manuel Puig's three novels. Clearly, then, Puig does not seem to fit in with the new novel Carlos Fuentes is describing. In discussing the novel in Spanish America, Carlos Fuentes advances ideas that serve to establish the dif­ ference between the French Novel and Hispanic-American Novel, and develops a thesis for the existence of three literary schools in the novelistic genre. Curiosamente, solo dos escuelas liter— arias se han empenado en prolongar la vida del realismo burgués y sus procedimientos: el llamado realismo socialists de la epoca staliniana y ^ Manuel Puig, "Growing up at the Movies: A Chronology," Review 72 (Winter 71/Spring 72), p. 49. ^ Puig, p. 49. sus derivaciones, que pretendfa crear una literatura revolucionaria con metodos acadèalcos y solo producfa solemnes caricaturas, y la antlnovela francesa, que lleva los procedimientos reallstas a su expreslon final: la de un mundo descrlptlvo de objetos vlstos por personajes en la etapa slcologlsta mas fragmentada: el nouveau roman franees bien podrfa llamarse la novela del realismo neocapltallsta. 5 Fuentes sees the third, Spanlsh-Amerlcan School, as that novel which expresses Itself "en la capacldad para encontrar y levantar sobre un lenguaje los mltos y las profeclas de una epoca cuyo verdadero sello no es la dlcotomla capltallsmo-soclallsmo, slno una suma de hechos ... que realmente estan transforraando la vlda en las socledades Industriales: automatlzaclon, électronlca, uso paclflco de la energla atomlca." ^ In view of this, however, Puig seems more closely associated with the French Novel than with the Spanlsh- Amerlcan Novel. In fact, Manuel Puig, In his Interview with Professor Saul Sosnowskl In responding to the question as to whether any writers, Latin-Amerlean or Argentine, have Influenced him, even subconsciously, gives a resounding no.

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