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STATE UNIV

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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

”Alienation and Entrapment in Four Novels

by Manuel Puig”
presented by

Nancy J. Broughton

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

 

Ph.D. degreeinépanlSh

Major professor

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Date March l5, 1993

MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0- 12771

 

 

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AND ALIENATION IN
FOUR NOVELS OF MANUEL PUIG

.7 By

Nancy Jo Broughton

A DISSERTATION '

Submitted to
_‘ Michigan State University
-r in partial fulgfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

 

ABSTRACT

ENTRAPMENT AND ALIENATION IN
FOUR NOVELS OF MANUEL PUIG

By

Nancy Jo Broughton

This study focuses upon entrapment and alienation as themes
and structural devices in four novels by the Argentine
author, Manuel Puig (1936-1990). These two elements exist
on numerous planes within the texts that potentially deceive
the characters as well as the reader. The introduction
explores the various narrative and structural elements that
unmask potential subtexts that continually converge and
mesh. The introduction also explores the significant role
of disillusionment in the face of the repressive society of
Latin America. These chapters follow: Chapter two: Lg
traicién de Rita Hayworth, Chapter three: Boggitas pintadas,
Chapter four: El beso de la mujer arana, and Chapter five:

Sangre de amor correspondido.

 

For Dr. Priscilla M

eléndez and for my family
for their encou

ragement and patience.

In memory of the meteorologist, my brother,

Chris Gentry.

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Introduction
Social and Historical Context.

Critical Approaches to Reading Puig' s Novels
Interpretive Approaches to the Textual

and Subtextual Levels.

Conclusion

Notes.

II. La traicién de Rita Hayworth .

The Twisted Passage of Time.

The Shift of Narrative Voice
Cinematography as a Narrative Voice.
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . .
Notes.

III. Boguitas pintadas.

The Convolution of Temporal Planes
Voices from Popular Art. . . .

The Myth of Don Juan Exhumed . .
Correspondence as a Fragmenting Device
Self- -incrimination . . . . . . .
Conclusion . . . . .

Notes. . . . . . . .

IV. El beso de la mujer arafia.

Structural Chaos . . .

Voices from Within . .
Script and Control from beyond the margins
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . .
Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

V. Sangre de amor correspondido . . .

Elusive Formal Structure

Disparate Narrative Voices

The Mask of Society. . . . . . .
Mother’ 3 Voice of Authority . . . .
Conclusion . . . . . . . . .
Notes. . . . . . . . . .

iv

.1-46

100
106
109—158

. 119
. 131
. 141
. 143

151
. 153
. 156

159-202

169
184
. 191
. 197
201

203—241

208
210
220
232
234
237

O ‘0 o I O o c I I 238-245

7 o

   

INTRODUCTION:
SOCIOHISTORICAL CONTEXT AND CRITICAL METHODOLOGY
IN THE NOVELS OF MANUEL PUIG

The “Boom“ era of Latin American literature of the
twentieth century, which peaked in the 19605, has produced a
number of novelists as well as contemporary innovative
narrative techniques that have transformed Latin America's
definition of literary brilliance. A result of this
movement is the following generation of “Junior Boom“
authors of the 19703 and 19805, such as Reinaldo Arenas,
Alfredo Bryce Echenique, and Manuel Puig, who not only have
refined, expanded, and redirected the techniques and themes
of the “Boom" authors but also have incorporated into their
writing a new social realism.1

Manuel Puig (1939-1990), one of the catalysts of the
'Junior Boom," concentrates on a unique version of the
Argentine social novel. This version underscores a close
relationship between a recognized political and historical
context, and narrative fiction that is a masked social and
political reflection of Argentine society, and more
specifically of Buenos Aires. In four of his eight novels,
La traicién de Rita Hayworth (1968), Boguitas pintadas
(1972), The Buenos Aires Affair (1973), and El beso de la

mujer arafia (1976), Puig narrows his focus to his native

country's capital. Although it seems that no overtly
documented events take place in his novels, the narrative
structure is built on a general scheme of Argentine
repressive government, which is indeed a product of
historical influences, such as the Peron regime of the
forties and afterward.2 The novels of Manuel Puig are

based on strong intertextualities that not only reflect the
social and cultural realities of twentieth—century Argentina
and Latin America, but also establish a dialogue with the
literature that sustains them. However, Puig’s texts are not
categorized under the heading of social realism.3 They
differ in several ways, including the fact that the novels
do not overtly denounce political factions. On the other
hand, Puig’s novels do share the disillusionment and
alienation typical of the genre. This study focuses on
alienation as a principal theme and structural device in the
following works: La traicién de Rita Hayworth, Bogpitas
pintadas, El beso de la mujer arafia, and Sangre de amor
ggrrespondido as these works reflect the oppressive society
that marginalizes the texts. Moreover, through the
narrative, discursive, and thematic strategies of the
novels, the reader becomes a potential victim as well. As a
consequence of alienation, the theme of entrapment plays a
significant role in the above texts, which is the second
focus of this study. Both characters and reader are
vulnerable to Puig’s textual snares.

Furthermore, the themes of alienation and entrapment

3
co-exist on two different levels: the textual, and that
which is apparently repressed from the text but found
lurking l'underneath'I it. By means of the undercurrents of
the texts, I will show how the narrative structure of the
novels is based on fragmentations and discursive
interactions and how the text is alienated from parallel
narrative voices and structures, and from the reader.
Through narrative conventions such as footnoting, the
presence of Grade B movies, and soap operas, among others,
Puig supplies the materials for alienation and entrapment by
providing conflicting or isolated texts. He is able to
achieve this by placing the focus completely on the text(s)
underneath or by actually omitting bits and pieces of the
primary text. The fragmented chapters of Puig's novels are
generally alienated from the other chapters by theme,
subject, or temporal and spacial planes, and only seem to
make sense at the end of the novel. Due to the deceptive
circular narrative structure of the four texts, these
endings offer a convincing "explanation" of the very first
chapter as well as the rest of the text. Puig's novels
invite readers to be active participants in interpreting the
material they are encountering, but by the end, the readers
are manipulated to re-interpret the entire novel from a
deceptive a priori point of view. That is, readers are
supplied with sufficient clues to lead to misleading
interpretations of the novel. Little by little they are

offered other clues or information that was previously

4
absent, and they must deviate from original deductions.
Readers are led to approach the novel from a distance,
relating the readings to sociopolitical markers borrowed
from the extra—textual
which potentially leads them to become members of an
isolated and deceived whole.

This introduction will explore the parameters which
provide for the study of the four novels by Manuel Puig and
perhaps account for their popularity. First, the historical
and social contexts of twentieth-century Latin America, more
specifically, Argentina, must be considered as central
aspects in the analysis. Secondly, I will delineate the
critical methodology which is necessary for investigating
the themes of alienation and entrapment on various textual
levels in La traicién de Rita Hayworth, Bogpitas pintadas,
El beso de la mujer arafia, and Sangre de amor correspondido.

SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT

To fully understand the contemporary Latin American
novel and more specifically, Puig’s texts that mirror the
socio-politcal ramifications of Argentina and Brazil, the
historical and social context which encompasses them must be
determined.‘ Puig’s novels follow the influential literary
epochs of Social Realism from 1930 to 1950 as well as the
“Boom“ novel of the 19605. His writing is one more
manifestation of the long—standing historical links between

Latin America’s sociopolitical reality and its literature.

5
History is a process which includes the significant events
affecting nations or institutions as well as the societies
and languages which experience it. Through the process of
interpretation, history becomes a discourse that reaches
back to the past and extends toward the present; and through
history's recognition and analysis of itseslf, history is
coupled with its literature.5 This does not suggest,
however, that history and literary production in a
particular time reflect each other. Some critics, such as
Octavio Paz accept the idea that they are opposites.‘ In
order to explain and analyze the evolution of Latin American
literature, we must keep in mind the relationship between
the two.

The text and its context result from the interpretation
of a society and its culture at a given time. The text also
serves as a point of departure for future texts as well as a
reflection of previous ones. The intertextual relationship
that exists among texts cannot be broken.7 The novels of
Manuel Puig demonstrate this strong kinship between the past
history of Latin America and its present identity. Puig's
works exemplify Argentina's definitive literary production
that shares a dialogue with history. This is especially
evident on sociopolitical and cultural levels that
underscore the oppresive environment under which literature
has been written. One can see as far back as 1848 with
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's sociopolitical commentary on

the Rosa dictatorship in Facundo. His novel underlined the

A

6

oppressive and alienating force of Rosa's reign, but also
engendered a new social criticism that opened the way for
later authors like Manuel Puig. As time progressed into the
twentieth century, so did

Argentina’s literary contributions that underscored the
marginalization of the big city, a prominent characteristic
that Puig has borrowed for La traicion de Rita Hayworth,
Bogpitas pintadas, and El beso de la mujer arafia. By the
19205, the stifling atmosphere of urban centers such as
Buenos Aires, became a focus of narrative production,
emphasizing man’s entrapment in a large "enclosure."
Moreover, innovative experimentation with narrative form and
language became an evident characteristic. Along with the
urban focus, the vanguardist movement burst into prominence
in the 19205. till entrapped by the ties with Europe's
artistic forces, the influence of the avant garde was
evident in the magazines that had been founded by young
writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, who would become
Argentina's creative paragon and authorial model for Manuel
Puig. The vanguardist tendencies seemed to express Latin
America's preoccupation with its personal identity, which
has provided the foundations for much of its current
literature. The problem of identity exists on both an
individual as well as a collective level and can be linked
to a greater force: the sociopolitical machinery of Latin
America, and more precisely, Argentina. The oppression of

class and race described in Puig’s novels establishes the

7
foundations for his texts. All of his works emphasize the
marginality of his characters based on the oppressive
boundaries fostered by social class and political control.
Puig’s social awareness can be traced back at least one
generation. Inspired by the Russian revolution and Marxism,
Argentine intellectuals responded to the dire sociocultural
situation of 1930. David W. Foster suggests the Argentine
writers felt:

the need to respond critically and in a denunciatory
fashion to the various mechanisms of repression and the
frustration of personal and collective aspirations
during the period. It was a period marked by the
violent military [Uriburu] takeover of September 1930.
(14)

Foster contends that the social and political situation as
well as the writers formed the conscience for Argentine
literature of 1930 to 1950, emphasizing the disillusionment
and alienation of the period. Foster supports Jesus
Méndez’s evaluation of the feelings of Argentine writers:

During the previous 50 years, Argentine intellectuals
had been praising their country on the basis of two
trends, the unprecedented economic growth and
prosperity, and the political stability along
democratic lines. These two characteristics became the
basis for the formation of the Argentine “national
mythology,“ in the absence of a long cultural and
historical tradition. The combination of the world
economic depression and the overthrow of the
constitutionally elected president by a military coup
seemed to undermine the foundations of the nation. In
this regard, the literature of pessimism and
disenchantment of Argentine intellectuals in the 19305
reflected the general discontent and disillusionment of
the Argentine population as a whole.... The
intellectual expressions of the 19305 are part of an
increasing alienation which had its origins in the
early years of the century. The crisis underscored that
state of individual impotence which had overtaken
Argentine intellectuals as a result of their
overdependence on patronage.... The absence of

8

self-generated parameters of behavior led to a deep

crisis of individual identity when the veneer of

national stability vanished. (15)

As Foster reminds us, the social realists were not the
cause of Argentina’s ideological crisis, rather they
furthered the quest for a national conscience and identity
(16). The novel of social realism that reflected
Argentina's struggle with repression represented a
commitment to social causes arising from the national
situation of the decade. This literature stands out for its
documentary realism, not for its technique. Although the
novels of social realism produced during the period were not
considered masterpieces, their critical influence on future
writers such as Puig, however, is evident.

The social realist writers of Argentina who conceded
that "la literatura funciona como algo auténomo de su
contexto inmediato econémico, politico y social” (Shaw, 15)
left their mark on the next generation of authors that
included Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortézar, and Roberto
Arlt. The social realist author viewed his responsibility
as to create a communion between literary reality and 'una
realidad de una cultura que busca su identidad en la
denuncia del sistema social vigente y en el rechazo de la
dependencia cultural" (Shaw, 16). In other words, Argentine
narrative did not just express the search for an identity
within the confines of a repressive atmosphere, but it also
carried the weight of social responsibility.

Roberto Arlt’s L95 siete locos (1931), for example,

9
parallels social realism, emphasizing the oppression of the
middle lower class in Argentina, much like Puig’s novels.
Arlt shows the relationship between the individual and
society through the stories of seven 1299; who form a secret

club. In essence, because these locos are both entrapped

 

within their own psychological prisons and are alienated
mentally from society, they must form their own commonalty.
With their obsessive goals of changing society, they
actually set out to destroy it. At the same time, the
intimate narration creates a close relationship between

reader and characters. The themes and preoccupations of Los

siete locos parallel and reflect the social, political and

cultural problems of Argentina and Latin America. Narrative
also emphasized the human condition, which stands out in the
works of Juan Carlos Onetti (1909) and Eduardo Mallea
(1903-1982). From Brushwood’s point of view, these authors
portray the I'novelization of the human spirit“ (124). For
example, Mallea’s Historia de una pasién deals with the
contrast between human relationships on a superficial level
and those of deeper concern. Furthermore, Mallea presents a
broader picture: the gap between the superficial and the
real Argentine society, once again underscoring man's
struggle to break from the limitations that society has
imposed.8 The text links the individual struggle of
existence and identity with that of society, which was a
tendency of the novel at the close of the 19305. Novels of

psychoanalitical inquiry and existentialism served as models

A

10
for younger authors in South America as well as in Europe
and North America.9 Themes of social concern and
individual anguish, combined with vanguardist techniques
from the previous decade, produced the criteria for the
novel of the 19405. However, with the new decade, the novel
was to enter into crisis.”

By the middle of the 19405, the novel experienced llthe
reaffirmation of fiction." Brushwood describes the new
novel in the following way:

They all deal with the Spanish American world, but

they are excellent examples of the difference between
personification and novelization. In other words, they are
all based on objective reality but they accomplish more than
the addition of life to the facts of history. They
transform objective reality, create worlds in the novels.
(159)

No country could provide better examples of the new novel
than Argentina, having felt the adverse effects of World War
Two. Exiled Spanish intellectuals fled to the port city of
Buenos Aires further affirming it as the principal cultural
center of Argentina, as well as of South America. These new
arrivals offered Argentine writers a needed boost.
Argentina's supply of critical thought and theory had been
severely curtailed due to the wars and the censorship of the
new Franco regime in Spain. The fresh wave of creativity
still dealt with universal themes, yet the emphasis was on
the individual in his vast and, at times irreal,
surroundings. Jorge Luis Borges’ contribution of Ficciones
in 1944 laid the foundations for future literature,

emphasizing man's constant struggle in the universal

11
labyrinth in which he has precariously entrapped himself
while in search of identity as well as literary reality.
According to Borges: "No hay clasificacién del
universo que no sea arbitraria y conjetural. La razén es

muy simple; no sabemos qué cosa es el universo".11

Along
with Borgesian ideology, new currents in psychoanalysis and
existentialism further influenced Argentine authors, evident
in Eduardo Mallea's Todo el verdor perecera (1941) and
Ernesto Sabato’s El tunel (1948). Both novels relate the
personal account of an anguished protagonist in a desperate
and endless search for communication. They also reflect the
social and cultural state of Argentina. At the time of the
publication of Todo el verdor percera, Argentina was
responding to World War Two. Exiled intellectuals were not
the only ones to escape to South America. The presence of
Axis spies was notable, causing internal political splits
which led to violence and instability in several nations.
In Argentina, fascism had been apparent, although it was not
a real threat to the country. However, in 1942 the Rio
conference was held, at which United States asked Latin
America for support in the fight against the Axis.
Argentina took a neutral stance, which in reality favored
the Axis powers. This political upheaval forced Latin
America and its authors to face a broader horizon and to
focus on a more international level.

The political crises had a profound effect on the novel

in Argentina and in Latin America, inspiring intellectuals

12
- and authors to produce a more universal novel. In other
words, the novel maintained its unique regional
characteristics but showed an international appeal, touching
on human themes that crossed social, cultural and political
barriers. Another political situation radically changed
Argentina: Juan Domingo Perén’s rise to power in 1945, which
as stated previously, provides the underlying theme of
Puig's La traicién de Rita Hayworth, Bogpitas pintadas, E1
beso de la mujer arafia, and Maldicién eteran a gpien lea
estas paginas. Although Eldemiro Farrell was the elected
president, Peron controlled the country. It was just a
matter of time before he consolidated and organized his
regime. Along with Peron’s dictatorship came a sense of
nationalism and political liberalism. He was the workers'
Messiah, publishing decrees and establishing new unions and
social programs that benefitted the lower and middle
classes. Pamela Bacarisse points out that "it was the power
of the workers who actually brought about Perén’s release
from prison in 1945," which in turn led to his regime.12
He and his wife, Evita, had created a New Argentina, masking
previous political and social problems with visions of
middle class utopia. Workers enjoyed new
luxuries--attending the opera, viewing Hollywood movies (not
to mention to emulate the lifestyles portrayed in them), and
living in homes in urban areas with modern appliances. His
subjects supported him although:

they knew little, and cared less, about Perén's Nazi
sympathies and Fascist training or his lack of

13

scruples. They rejoiced in a newfound sense of

nationality, resenting what they saw as foreign

interference when their leader's more distasteful

practices and leanings were brought light abroad.13

However, not everyone supported the Peron regime. Two
opposing political factions were evident during the Perén
years: the peronistas, who saw Peron as the Vindicator of
past wrongdoings, and the antiperonistas, who regarded the
Peron government as “the onerous outgrowth of past mistakes"
(Brushwood, 201). This political split not only caused
friction among the people, but also contributed to an
emphasis in narrative on the individual who questions his
existence in the universe, and more specifically, in modern
society thus demythifying the utopian image of Argentina.

Sébato’s El tunel (1948), for example, demonstrates
man’s need for communion and communication with others in a
complex and faceless society. Critics have suggested that
Leopoldo Marechal’s Adan Buenosayres (1948) also expresses
the relationship between the individual and universal man.
This text exemplifies the shift from regional concerns to
universal themes and values. As the title suggests, regional
man from a distinct urban areas is coupled with a universal
symbol, Adam. These novels exemplify the trend in Latin
America at the end of the 19405 toward a new perspective in
the novel: the shift toward universal themes expressed
through the world created by the novelist.

Argentinian novels also reflected the era of change
during the Peron regime, which brought on anxiety from the

association of tradition with identity (Brushwood, 192).

14
Perén’s fall from power in 1955 brought about a sense of
failure within Argentine society. A generation of authors
who reflected that attitude were know as “parricidal.” They
were critics and writers who examined Argentina in order to
discover its true reality by rejecting Perén’s vision of
middle class utopia and to “push aside hypocrisy, false
patriotism and hero worship so Argentines could face up to
their true past" (204). At the forefront were David Vifias’
Cayé sobre su rostro (1955), which delves back to the
presidency of Julio Roca in 1879, and the essayistic novel
of existentialist alienation and the search for identity
expressed in La fatalidad de los cuerpos (1955) by Héctor
Murena. Both novels coincided with the year of Perén's
downfall and further established the reflection of social,
political and cultural reality in the novel.

The culmination of the novel came about with the I'Boom"
novel in the following decade which stood out for its
portrayal and unique re-creation of reality, and paved the
way for the next generation of writers that includes Manuel
Puig. The focus of the novel no longer rested on the story
itself. In fact, the story became non-existent in many
works, for example, those of Julio Cortézar. The novel
transcended the traditional parameters of the nature of
reality and creation through the conceptualization of the
text and the consciousness of the act of writing. In other
words, the creation of narrative and its internal reality

became the context of the work instead of its method. The

15
idea of the proper novel was replaced with that of the
antinovela, a precursor to Puig's novela de desmitificacién,
which as Donald Shaw suggests, implies that:
La desintegracién aparente del mundo antes aceptado
como <<real>> dejo al escritor enfrentado con la
autonomia de su propia fantasia creadora, 0 sea, con
algo que (para él, al menos) es incontestablemente real
y verdadero. Cabria interpretar la destruccién de la
realidad externa a él como equivalente a la liberacién
absoluta (por primera vez) de su propio genio creador
ya sin trabas de ningun género. (16—17)
Cortazar offers his artistic view of reality in Rayuela
(1963), which seems to contradict the entire concept of
literature by throwing its language, structure and form into
apparent chaos. Through this process, the novel refutes
external reality and its pretexts, and engenders its own
existence through the search for internal reality. Through
such a quest, much of Argentinian narrative of the 19705
narrowed its central focus to the covert criticism of
sociopolitical ideals and myths upheld by previous
literature. Whereas the latter further supported the
mythification of ideals, the former manifested itself in its
demythification.“ Moreover, the novel seemed to shift
its focus around the stifling limitations of Buenos Aires.
This societal revelation can also be noted in the works of
Puig's contemporaries. Foster suggests that by emphasizing
social degradation, Enrique Medina's Striptease (1973) and
Lag gumbas (1972) expose Buenos Aires' underbelly, producing
I'calculatedly precise images of the worst of our

sociocultural myths“ (72). With the demythification of

values and idols, Argentine literature of the 19705 focuses

16
on the dynamics of social reality. The volatile combination
of the art of demythification and the "Boom’s" influence on
the next generation of authors is evident in Manuel Puig’s
novels. His narrative closely follows the novel of
self-referentiality of the 19605, which not only tells a
story but comments on how it is told. Furthermore, this
type of writing, often dubbed "metafictional," exploits the
manipulation of artifice. Puig published his first
metafictional novel, La traicién de Rita Hayworth, in 1968.
The novel is based on strong intertextualities of both
social reality and self—referentiality through twentieth
century’s most influential and deceptive devices: pop
culture and the mass media. The role and presence of the
narrator and authorial voice virtually disappear, leaving
the reader seemingly alone in the act of creation of the
novel. The focal point of the novel is the dialectic
created by the gaps in the text and the proliferation of
palimpsestic texts and contexts, resulting from the
manipulation of a variety of artifice and narrative
techniques, such as the incorporation of Grade I‘B'I movies,
tango lyrics, interior monologues, diaries and letters. The
parts of the novel are provided in isolated fragments, and
the reader must evaluate them to make a coherent whole. The
fragments themselves contain missing information. The
reader must attempt to link them or even provide the missing
pieces of each fragment. Yet the conflictive messages

offered by narrative techniques function as text and

17
context, and at the same time comment on themselves. Thus
the reader is provided a significant role as the co-creator
of this metafiction.

On the national level, La traicion de Rita Hayworth
reflects a trend in Argentinian narrative of the 19605 and
19705, as David Lagmanovich points out:

Una tendencia se marca con claridad: el narrador

argentino de la década del 60 (y de la del 70) asume en

forma mas plena que en el pasado la realidad nacional,
con inclusion explicita de las alternativas de la
penosa Vida politica argentina de estos ultimos
afios.... La novela y el cuento de hoy aparecen, en
consecuencia, considerablemente mas <<politizados>> que
las obras similares de décadas anteriores.15
La traicién de Rita Hayworth reflects the national reality
of the time between 1933 and 1948 when society and culture
were relatively stagnant, as a result of the unstable and
censorial governments that prevailed during that time. Puig
covertly criticizes the political climate through his
presentation of characters from all walks of life who
aimlessly wander about the text searching for some meaning
of existence. The structure of the text seems to revolve
around the thoughts and events of Toto, the insecure and
effeminate child of Berto and Mita who lives in the barren
town of Coronel Vallejos. A conglomeration of unhappy
thoughts and obsessions of life's incompleteness provides a
deceptive narrative structure that sends the reader through
the story, which ironically leads back to 1933, suggesting
eternal suffering and imprisonment. Toto, his parents,

relatives, acquaintances, and schoolmates provide the

outbursts of consciousness which constitute the text.

18
Puig’s subsequent novel, Bogpitas pintadas (1969) repeats
the formula of La traicién de Rita Hayworth. Again, the
characters are found identifying with and even imitating the
situations they have witnessed through the conventions of
pop culture, in this case, the soap opera as an esape
mechanism. A striking contradiction exists between their
belief in the romantic passion produced by television and
radio serials, and the daily reality of their mediocre
relationships, entrapping themselves in the margins between
the real and the fantasized.

Bogpitas pintadas is based on nostalgia, which
functions as theme as well as narrative technique. The
focus of the novel revolves around Nene’s recollections and
regrets in life. Her story is presented through letters,
conversations, one-sided dialogue, and soap operas, which
are structured in folletin style, imitating the entregas of
the nineteenth-century romantic novel and the twentieth-
century radio and television serial, leading the reader to
follow deceptive narrative strategies. Each entrega
consists of a separate installment, dispersing vital
narrative and structural cues. Cultural reality and the
conventions of pop culture and literature become so
intertwined that the two converge, thus blurring reality and
the representation of reality on which the interpretation of
the text depends.

Through the 19705, Puig continues experimenting with

the representation of culture, reality and its distorted

19
images with The Buenos Aires Affair (1973) and El beso de la
mujer arafia (1976). The former is a ’novela policial which
at first glance may seem to be a typical detective mystery.
However, Puig parodies the genre by constructing the
apparent rape of the female protagonist, Gladys, at the
beginning of the novel, presenting one—sided mysterious
phone calls to the police, and a murder for which there is
no corpse—-that is, until the end when Leo, the other
protagonist, falls victim to his own fabrication.

The Buenos Aires Affair demythifies the sexual taboos
that were so prevalent in the traditional Latin American
novel. Detailed acts of sadism, sodomy and erotic
ostentation set the tone of the text. The mystery and
tension created by these quasi-pornographic acts and the
sexual frustration produced by them contrast with the
characters who enact them. A non-traditional portrayal of
the problematics of sexual identity is also evident in E;
beso de la mujer arafia (1976). The novel focuses on two
protagonists, Valentin and Molina, who share a prison cell
in Buenos Aires, physically and psychologically alienated
from the rest of the world. Each one is living on the
margins of society. Valentin is a "subversive
revolutionary“ and Molina is a homosexual accused of
'influencing' young males. Valentin and Molina become
emotionally united through Valentin's recollection of Grade
8 movie plots to pass the time. These "metatexts'I function

on several different levels. First, they serve as plots

20
within plots, representing the utopia to which Molina wishes
to belong. They also serve as a narrative voice which not
only entraps Valentin, but the reader as well, reflecting
the contrast between the values represented through pop
culture and the cultural reality of Buenos Aires, as well as

Latin America. Puig’s last novel of the decade, Pubis

 

angelical (1979), follows the patterns of his first three
novels. The representation of characters under the thumbs
of a repressive government is evident, as well as the role
of the female in a male—dominated society. Pubis angelical
is perhaps Puig’s most blatant criticism of the Peron
regime.

The novel revolves around Ana, a young Argentine who is
dying from an incurable disease in a Mexican hospital.
While awaiting her death, she is visited by Beatriz, a
feminist free from oppressive macho domination; and is also
visited by Pozzi, a leftist who wants to convince Ana to
co-operate in helping to kidnap her ex-husband in Argentina
for political reasons. Pubis angelical portrays social
reality in order to protest its inequality and injustices.
Yet, Puig offers no solutions; rather, he seems to portray
inherent characteristics of social and cultural reality
which are manifested in the oppressive conditions of Latin
America of the 19705: entrapment in an inescapable and
unchanging environment.

Puig also portrays Latin America’s political situation

from a distanced point of view in Maldicién eterna a guién

21
lea estas paginas (1981). Whereas the previous novels take
place in Buenos Aires, this text is set in New York City.
The relationship formed by Larry, an unemployed historian
from the city, and Sefior Ramirez, an old Argentinian
political exile, provide the thematic and structural
foundation of this novel. Like Pubis angelical, Maldicion
eterna a gpien lea estas paginas is a text that demands the
active participation of the reader. However, it differs
from the other novels in the absence of pop culture
conventions.

The diachronic dynamics of Argentina’s social reality
are also evident in Maldicién eterna a gpién lea estas
péginas. Larry's historical quest is to unlock and decode
Sefior Ramirez's hieroglyphic document about the repressive
government of the previous decades, a text which the latter
secretly wrote as a political prisoner. The interpretation
of history through Senor Ramirez's eyes would elucidate not
only the historical process of Argentina, but also the
present state of social and cultural reality of the nation.
The focus on Argentina’s social and cultural reality is
strong in Puig’s following novel, Sangre de amor
correspondido (1982). It is set in rural Brazil and again
avoids the glitz of Buenos Aires pop culture. However,

other social conventions fill the void, such as soccer,
around which Josemar's life revolves. He, along with his
ex-girlfriend, Maria are the protagonists of the novel. He

returns to their small rural town, years after he had

22

abandoned her, which supposedly had driven her crazy. The
focus does not remain on them; rather, the reader spends the
entire novel decoding the dialectic between the first person
present tense and the third person preterite. Due to the
mismatching tenses, the reader cannot analyze the text
through the traditional act of reading. Instead, he must
picture the novel as if it were a tape—recorded interview.
The reader is challenged to supply the missing information
which the discrepancy of the tenses erases. The dialogue
which ensues between Josemar and Maria da Gloria entraps
them in their world and snares the reader in the act of
(re)creating the text. The sublety of narrative strategies
which Puig employs in Sangre de amor correspondido creates a
seemingly more IIreadable“ text, but in actuality the novel
requires a greater manipulation of artifice and technique,
thus creating a more complex experience through the act of
its re(creation).

Puig’s final creation, Cae la noche tropical, is
.perhaps his most conventional novel. Like his previous
works, this one takes place amidst urban sprawl, this time
in Rio de Janeiro during 1987-1988. Two elderly women, Luci
and Nidia nostalgically pass the time reminiscing the Buenos
Aires of the past while openly criticizing its current
state. Their main focus rests on the lives of others around
them who are portrayed through their mediocrity. Unlike
Puig’s other works, the narrative unfolds a simple, tender

story of two lonely women whose lives are about to close.

23

Manuel Puig and his contemporaries, such as the Cuban,
Severo Sarduy and the Peruvian, Alfredo Bryce Echenique,
continue the evolution of the contemporary Latin American
novel by creating worlds in the text where meaning must come
from within, conflicting with ideas and conclusions that are
derived from the extra-literary world. Therefore, the
reader’s interpretation of the novel cannot arise from
assumptions from his own experience; rather, he must
encounter meaning in the text itself. This study will
examine the unique use of narrative strategies that question
the act of reading, the role of the reader and the influence
of extra-literal reality, and at the same time search for a
definable cultural reality.

In final consideration I wish to propose several
generalizations which describe the evolution of Latin
American writing. As we have seen, Latin American narrative
has experienced a grand evolution in the twentieth century.
By the middle of the 19605, the I“Boom" novel followed its
predecessors’ ideals (Borges, Carpentier), focusing on the
novelization of the text. Two characteristics made the
"Boom" unique—-the conceptualization of the novel and of the
act of writing, and the concern with cultural heritage and
identity. The focus on internal reality led to the
self—referential novel which emphasized the act of creation.

These novels were replaced by the metafictional novel
of which Manuel Puig is a master. The quest of cultural

identity is explored, questioned, and masked through the act

A

24

of narration. The act of reading and interpretation is
therefore abstracted from the seemingly inseparable literary
and extra—literay worlds. In order to analyze Puig's
innovative use of narrative strategies, it is necessary to
explore the critical presuppositions which underly them,
clarifying Puig's novelistic techniques.
CRITICAL APPROACHES TO READING PUIG’S TEXTS

The novel of Social Realism from 1930 to 1950 and the
“Boom“ Novel of the 19605 provide the underlying foundation
of Manuel Puig’s novels. The former offers a thematic base,
whereas the "Boom" Novel contributes to Puig’s use of
innovative narrative techniques. In his works, Puig borders
on social testimonial without commiting himself to the
ideals of the Novel of Social Realism. Unlike the authors
of those novels, Puig manifests no political persuasion nor
does he offer any solution to the repressive governments
under which his characters exist. On the other hand,
although no documentable historical events take place, and
in some cases no identifiable time frame seems apparent,
vestiges of Argentinian social, historical, and cultural
contexts act as the structure for Puig’s works.

As an inheritor of the "Boom’s" innovations, Manuel
Puig has expanded the continual process of experimentation
with and discovery of heterogeneous norms and conventions in
the novel. The reader's participation in the act of
creation must also evolve with the text. The result of this

process is the proliferation of several readings and

25
interpretations based on the numerous texts and subtexts
produced in the novel. The diachronic paths along which the
reader can travel often entrap him into misreadings or
distorted interpretations which arise from numerous
narrative, figurative and literal cues. Thus, several
readings are manifested in each text. Readers are often
entrapped and isolated within the boundaries of a given text
until they encounter the existence of other texts and
subtexts.

The participation of the reader plays a significant
role in Puig’s novels. Wolfgang Iser suggests that the
novel is nonfunctional without the participation of the
reader, who actively discovers the effects of the text
instead of its meaning.16 The reader complements the text
as he opposes the artistic pole of the author. Iser states
that “the reader provides aesthetic realization and the work
must be situated between the [author and reader].“ (21) In
turn, the reader views the text as a set of instructions to
which he responds. The reader’s role is structured by three
basic components:

the different perspectives represented in the text

(narrator, characters, plot, etc.), the vantage point

from which he joins them together, and the meeting

place where they converge. The whole process is set in

mgtion by the need to familiarize the unfamiliar (Iser,
The text is unfamiliar because no context exists for the
reader's comparison. The text does not reproduce reality,
rather it creates its own. However, the text brings into it

a variety of conventions of the real world which clashes

 

26
with the reader's perceptions of it. The reader brings to
the text several presuppositions formed by historical and
social norms which he applies during the act of reading.
These same norms are found within the text, but in a very
different light:
The fictional text makes a selection from a variety of
conventions to be found in the real world and it puts
them together as if they were interrelated. It brings
them before us in unexpected combinations so that they
begin to be stripped of their validity. These
conventions are taken out of their social contexts,
deprived of their regulating function and so become
subjects of scrutiny themselves. (Iser, 61)
This discovery of "performance“ leads to the basic
comprehension of the possible underlying texts and sets up
what Iser terms “expected expections" which occur when the
literary text interferes by taking "the prevalent thought
system or social system as its context, but does not
reproduce its frame of reference which stabilizes these
systems.” (71) However, these expectations are generally
thwarted because it is the frustration caused by defeated
expections that stimulate the reader to respond to the text.
In Puig’s case, these frustrations are brought about by
the extensive use of popular culture from the extra-textual
world. The reality evoked in the text is not confined to
the printed page and is not intented to be a mere replica
(Iser, 69). The extra-textual elements go through a
transformation in the text and become an "intregal feature
of the whole process of communication" (Iser, 69). This

opens the door 0 new connections in the text. However, the

old connections for the reader still remain present. Puig

27
takes advantage of this clash, by maintaining the
frustration level and forcing the reader to constantly react
to the textual world.

The interplay between text and reader involves a
restructuring of textual perspectives and aesthetic meaning.
The theme, which Iser deems as "the view that the reader is
involved with at one time," (98) constantly shifts through
Puig’s texts. This also changes the “horizon," which is the
other perspective segments in which the reader had been
previously situated (Iser, 99). The reader must continually
re-evaluate both theme and horizon as they shift back and
forth through time, space, and viewpoint. He must also keep
in check the transformation of the extra-textual
interference that provides the frame of reference of his
response.

In sum, the reader is an active force in the deceptive
web spun in Puig's texts. The reader provides the
expectations, effects, and responses cued by the text.
However, the interference between extra—textual reality and
the reality offered in the work clash. This reaction to
cues points to an element of frustration for the reader that
stimulates a response to the text. The effects of such
response are what guide the interpretation of the text.
However, extra—textual interference continually blurs the
point of perspective of the text. This study concentrates
on this constant clash of perspectives through the

exploration of two distinct themes: entrapment and

28

alienation in the novels of Manuel Puig as they apply to the
act of reading on various textual, and fictive levels in the
following novels: La traicién de Rita Hayworth, Bogpitas
pintadas, El beso de la mujer arafia, and Sangre de amor
correspondido. I will also analyze the process of evoking
possible readings, in other words, the "scraping" of the
palimpsest which provides the potential to unearth explicit
and implicit readings. The roles of narrative discourse,
narrator and author also pose dilemmas that exploit meaning
through masked and elusive representation which lead to
potential reader entrapment. Lastly, the presence of
pop-culture reveals the dialectic between intra—textual and
extra-textual structures which reinforces the problems of
interpretation on several levels, once again leading the
reader down a deceptive path of (re)creation of the text.

Throughout this study, several points will be addressed
in thematic, narrative, and literal planes. Alienation and
entrapment are the key themes to be discussed. However, in
order to fully understand their repercussions, one must
explore the many possibilities through the notion of the
palimpsest. The key to unlocking the text, as Iser
suggests, lies in the hands of the reader, who is in turn,
manipulated of the very text that constantly masks through
such control. In order to fully elucidate the possibilities
of textual proliferations, the following must be discussed:
entrapment and alienation evoked by thematic and narrative

strategies, such as the role of pop culture.

29

All of Puig’s novels manifest the themes of entrapment
and alienation, yet they have never been fully analyzed from
the clash between various textual and subtextual levels.
Alienation, on a literal level applies to characters who are
isolated from others physically as well as emotionally, and
imprisoned on spatial, societal and psychological levels.
The alienated characters experience a sense of disconnection
between the self and the world. For example, in El beso de
la mujer arafla, Molina and Valentin, who live on the
periphery of society and are imprisoned in a cell on the
outskirts of Buenos Aires, are captives both spatially and
psychologically. As a homosexual and a political rebel
respectively, Molina and Valentin manifest ideals and
behavior which are unacceptable to society. Hence, they
have been isolated from the the world in which they cannot
fit. In The Age of Alienation, Bernard Murchland
suggests that:

The facts to which the term alienation refers are,

objectively, different kinds of disassociation, break

or rupture between human beings and their objects,

whether the latter be other persons, or the natural

world, or their own creations of art, science and

society; and subjectively, the corresponding states of

disequilibrium, disturbance, strangeness, and

anxiety.17
Puig's characters are hoplessly subjugated to a sense of
emptiness, isolated from the rest of the world, lacking the
ability to communicate with those who surround them. I will
explore in depth how the fragmented structure of discourse,

the interaction (or lack of it) between characters and their

reality provide an alienating text.

30

In addition to being alienated from their world, the
characters are also separated from a literary reality, from
the text itself. This sense of alienation includes the
reader as well as the act of writing and reading. Puig
provides extra-textual references, such as imaginary soccer
radio broadcasts and footnotes, that displace the characters
from the literary world through the clash with the reader’s
extra-literary standpoint of interpretation. Furthermore,
the reader becomes alienated through the very same act.
Puig adopts these conventions from the extra—literary world
and places them in the text, leading the reader to identify
with these cues from a personal frame of reference.

Literary and extra-literary worlds are spuriously
incompatible because the reader bases the act of
interpretation on a world (the extra—literary) which is
covertly incongruous to the novels. Moreover, information
that the reader retrieves in the novel is distorted, hidden
or withheld from him, therefore requiring a reading below
the primary textual level, which may also be deformed. The
reader is further alienated through the act of
interpretation and the unmasking of the proliferation of
texts and subtexts.

Puig provides undercurrents of the texts that are
presented in fragmented discourse. His premises for
alienation are offered through narrative conventions and a
constant bombardment of extra—textual references based

mostly on mass communications. The focus of his texts is

31
distorted, shifting back and forth to the texts underneath,
or omitting fragments of them. Thus, the reader must play
an active role in a continual process of (re)interpreting
the text.

Entrapment is the result of Puig’s alienating texts.
From the very outset of his novels, Puig’s characters find
themselves in a politically repressive society from which
they cannot escape. However, that realization does not
stifle their attempts to flee from repression. With each
endeavor the characters entangle themselves further in
deception, and the web they spin also entraps other
characters. The deception is usually reciprocal,
intentional and unknown to the intended victims. The
characters betray each other along with themselves. The
result of the novels is "complete" entrapment both on the
textual and subtextual levels, since the characters both
create and are created by the conventions which entrap them.

On a purely thematic level, the characters victimize
others through their narrative, fictive, and textual
dominance. As creations of the author (and reader as well),
they are subjugated to the whims of authorial control or
displacement. And, on other levels, they are at risk of
being unwittingly exposed. They are unaware of what
underlies the text, leaving the reader to believe that the
control and interpretation of the novels rest in his hands.
Therefore, the various levels of the texts work with and

against each other, in turn alienating and deluding the

32
reader. Like the characters, readers are left with the
mirage of control which they cannot fully grasp. Readers are
victims of deception and entrapment through the process of
reading. They become caught up in interpreting and
re-interpreting the exposed texts, which reveal themselves
as fragmented and isolated from each other. Through
specific narrative strategies, such as using movies as
narrator or dialogue disguised as movie script for example,
Puig exposes the myths and cliches of pop culture,
psychology and societal values. These guises entrap readers
due to their own frame of reference based on the
extra-literary world in which they experience them. By
exposing readers to several different textual and subtextual
messages and omitting key referents, Puig takes advantage of
the readers, deceiving them and guiding them to misinterpret
the novel.

Yet, the subtext provides a key to reading the textual
cues. A medieval term such as "palimpsest" may seem
archaic and out of place when defining contemporary novels,
especially when one considers the overwhelming presence of
modern technology in Puig’s works, such as the cinema and
the soap opera. Nevertheless, the palimpsest metaphorically
explains the development of La traicién de Rita Hayworth,
Bogpitas pintadas, El beso de la mujer arafia, and Sangre de
amor correspondido. The metaphor of the palimpsest reveals
the proliferation of several intertexts through the process

of intermingling the acts of writing, reading, and narration

33
with implicit and explicit modes of discourse. These
devices appear in conventional forms, such as narrative
dialogue, monologue, and diaries; and in the unconventional
forms, such as the cinema, soap opera, radio broadcasts and
even hallucinations. They all reveal and mask several
readings in the text, due to the possible readings evoked by
the constant multiplication of underlying texts and
subtexts.

Priscilla Meléndez in "Writing and Reading the
Palimpsest: Donoso’s El jardin de al lado" states that the
palimpsest is a system that:

functions as a literary metaphor in which the

substitution of the object and its referent for one or

more other objects and referents does not imply the
disappearance of the first set. Although in the
medieval practice of “scraping again“ the text
substituted is not necessarily linked to what it
covers, the dialectical implications suggested by the
palimpsestic metaphor...connect and unmask the multiple
covert/overt texts that demand to be read.18
By its very nature, the palimpsest unveils single units of
texts while at the same time it obscures others. The
discovery of multiple texts and subtexts, both overt and
covert, suggests a level of intertextuality. Thus, on the
first reading of the text, Puig’s four novels seem to
struggle with internal conflict because they yield to
fictive and literal boundaries yet to be effaced. The
result is fragmentations of texts and subtexts that somehow
relate to each other but are in need of a missing link. The

reader must search for:

the illusory discovery of footprints, of ruins [which]
submerges the observer (reader) in a world that has

34

apparently disappeared and on which new worlds —— or
texts -- have been built or written (Melendez, 200).

It is the reader who assumes responsibility not only for the
act of interpretation but also for the process of discovery
which produces the complete text, whether it consists of a
primary text or includes possible subtexts waiting to
emerge.

INTERPRETIVE APPROACHES ON THE THE TEXTUAL AND SUBTEXTUAL
LEVELS

It is pertinent to clarify that the term subtext is
used in this study as a critical approach to what underlies
the literal text. Unlike the text, the subtext is not
immediately apparent even after the palimpsestic "scraping,"
and depending on the reader, it is perhaps completely
obfuscated. Terry Eagleton refers to the subtext as:

the unconscious of the work itself. [It is] a text

which runs within it, visible at certain 'symptomatic’

points of ambiguity, evasion or overemphasis, and which

we as readers are able to ’write’ even if the novel

itself does not.”
The text, much like the brain, is intimately involved with
insights and omissions, and it is important to explore what
the text does not say as well as what it says. Exploring
the subtext involves a psychoanalytical approach to
analyzing the novel which is pertinent to the study of
Puig’s works. Narrative techniques used by Puig, such as
footnotes of an omniscient author and first—person interior
monologues, are much like a dream text in that the

techniques focus on symptomatic places--distortions,

elisions, ambiguities, absences, ambivalences and points of

35
intensity in the narrative. The places are like dreams in
that the fragments of information, whether distorted or not,
must be pieced together to form a coherent whole. It is the
reader who must explore and uncover the layers of clues in
order to reach and decode the subtext. As Eagleton
suggests, there the reader can discover not only what the
text means, but also how it works. (182)

Another vehicle for the subtext to manifest itself is
through the absence of an authoritative voice that offers
the reader several possibilities for a controlling narrative
voice. On the one hand, the proliferation of many
intertexts without an obvious narrator both create confusion
and offer several readings. But on the other hand, this
proliferation opens the door for the reader to be imbued
with a false sense of authority.

Through the presentation of various implicit and
explicit discourses, the reader must sort out the figural
and literal nature of the text(s) at hand in oder to expose
and interpret the multiple readings underneath. However,
the narration, fragmented formal structure, and the role of
pop culture within the text complicate the process of
interpretation.

The act of narration places the reins of authorial
control in the hands of the reader. Yet the presentation of
various contradictory narrative devices makes the process of
sorting out the multiple readings a difficult and deceptive

task. within each novel, no character plays a key role in

36
narrative control, thus shadowing the focus of the text.

Furthermore, fragments of narration stem.from
unconventional devices (through the use of the cinema, radio
broadcasts, and the soap opera) which not only speak for the
characters but also provide them with a sense of anonymity
and the feeling of otherness which is also suggested by the
proliferation of texts. Thus, the metaphor of the
palimpsest conceptually elucidates the act of substitution.
These devices, by creating a text of their own, replace the
original text leaving the characters' “footprints" in its
path.

Narrative devices represented by the act of writing
through diaries, letters, and other communicative texts,
etch in stone the characters' actions, thoughts, and
experiences. The act of writing suggests the desire to be
accounted for permanently, which contradicts the messages
sent by the unconventional devices. Yet, like those
devices, writing transforms the created being into a
creator. Writing one’s experiences and infusing them with
modes of pop culture, trigger the metamorphosis of character
into author; and reading the several texts offered through
these devices makes the reader a co-conspirator of the act.

Other kinds of narrative discourse abound in the texts,
which invite the possibilities of several contradictory
levels of reading. Variations of dialogue and monologue
exploit the act of reading through both traditional and

non-traditional presentation. In La graicién de Rita

37
Hayworth, Puig offers a dialogue in the foam of a telephone
conversation--as if the reader were standing next to the
speaker, Choli, and were thus unable to hear the
interlocutor's responses through the receiver. Through the
act of inferring the parts of the missing dialogue, the
reader must piece together a two-way conversation. In other
words, meaning, text(s), and context(s) all must stem from
the reader.

Traditional devices of dialogue and monologue are no
easier to read in Puig's works. Underneath a common
structure lie several texts to be revealed. The discourse
presented and that which is interpreted may not be the same,
due to unique narrative twists, such as interlocutors who
speak in completely contrasting tenses. In Sangre de amor
correspondido, for example, the structure of the novel rests
on a spoken discourse between two ex-lovers, Josemar and
Maria da Gloria. However, Josemar addresses her in the
second-person present tense and she responds in the third—
person preterite throughout the entire text. Therefore, the
text lends itself to potential mis—matching readings that
spiral endlessly.

Finally, the role of pop culture must be considered. As
I stated previously, the phenomenon of pop culture serves as

a narrative device in Puig's four novels. The narrative

structures of La traicion de Rita Hayworth, Bogpitas

pintadas, E1 beso de la mujer arana, and Sangre de amor
cgrrespondido depend on modes of popular culture. Puig has

38

attempted to demythify the conventions of mass culture,
bringing them to “the level of serious literature.'"

Popular culture has been viewed as a means of
entertainment and escape that appeals to the masses, usually
by evoking extremes of human actions and reactions. Many
critics have analyzed modes of popular culture that are
larger than life, such as the tango and cinematography. The
glitter of the movies and radio in the novels has been
analyzed as a means of escape and fantasy for the
characters, emphasizing their alienation from society or
from.the world. On the other hand, they have entrapped
themselves in a created world from.which they do not attempt
to escape. What many critics have overlooked is that the
cinema and other modes of entertainment are not soley used
in literary writing as a representation of twentieth-century
pop culture. In Puig's novels they serve as a basis of
communication as well as a basis of narration and text.21

Puig utilizes elements drawn from or patterned on forms
of mass communication and entertainment to translate art
into life and life into art. In order to demythify pop
culture, Puig has patterned Grade B movies, soap operas,
tango lyrics, the folletin, and radio broadcasts to fit the
structures and functions of literary conventions such as
diaries, monologues, dialogues, movie scripts, epitaphs,
and one-sided telephone conversations.”

The spectacle of film, radio, and the folletin provide

the characters with a form of entertainment as well as an

39
exercise in idealized perception, presenting a rather
predictable larger-than-life story. The Hollywood ideals
reflect diachronic narrative conventions based on
"historically distinct set of norms of narrational
construction and comprehension."23 Moreover, through the
act of viewing, the spectator (in this case, the characters
in the novels) acquire certain social prototypes and
procedures that may contradict reality and potentially
alienate one from it. Thus, the narrative of the cinema and
other modes of entertainment provide the social and
historical models through its very presentation and through
the reiterations and interpretations by the characters in
the text. Narrations of pop culture are conventionally
considered to be anything but complex, based on “infantile
logic“ (Bordwell, 159) and causality with the objective of
encountering absolute truth. Bordwell explains:
[They] present psychologically defined individuals who
struggle to solve a clear-cut problem or to attain
specific goals. In the course of this struggle, the
characters enter into a conflict with ends with a
decisive victory or defeat, a resolution of the problem
and a clear achievement or nonachievement of the goals.
The principal causal agency is thus the character, a
discrimdnated individual endowed with a consistent
batch of evident traits, qualities, and behaviors....
The star system has as one of its functions the
creation of a rough character prototype for each star
which is then adjusted to the particular needs of the
role...usually the protagonist...and the chief object
of audience identification (157).
The conventional result is the victory of absolute truth and
a happy ending. The star is held up to be an idol and
provides an opportunity for the reappearance of his or her

persona in spectacle after spectacle. This offers the

40
observer the possibility of utter absorption into each
presentation and the identification of such a star with
extrinsic social norms and ideals. These images which the
stars and pop culture represent, reflect the cultural
reality of the time, and in Puig’s case, criticizes and
demythifies that very image. Puig explores cultural reality
by exploiting the conventions on which it rests, namely pop
culture. He has borrowed the entertainment world of
Hollywood, using it as a mode of enjoyment and escape, and
at the same time providing deceptive and false role models
to the public.

As previously stated, the conventions of pop culture
are found not only on the literal level but also on the
figural level. Through their presentation, the products of
mass communication shift from thematic to technical devices.
Popular culture is mimetic, in other words, it is conveyed
through dramatization of an unattainable fantasy world. In
Puig's novels, though, mimesis is converted into a narrative
voice. The movies, soap operas, tangos, folletin, and radio
broadcasts became part of the fictional world of the novel,
reiterating stories of the intra-textual world. Thus, the
modes of pop culture represent the world, thoughts and
speech of the characters in the text. Through the conversion
from mimesis to diegesis, pop culture becomes distorted,
alienating the literary convention from its extra-literary
foam. The gaps between popular culture and life blur the

boundaries between the two, making it difficult to

41
distinguish where one leaves off and the other begins in the
literary world.

Modes of popular culture are representations of

cultural reality. In La traicion de Rita Hayworth, Bogpitas

pintadas, El beso de la mujer arafia, and Sangre de amor
correspondido, pop culture is not only placed within the

literary world, but it is also presented, inferred, and
interpreted by characters in that world. One must also
consider the literary world’s source: the world of the
author and reader, which accounts for deviations in the act
of reading and interpretation. Moreover, the modes of pop
culture serve as a narrative voice, calling into question
any authoritative voice in the text, further blurring the
distinction between what is literal and what is figural.

The modes of popular culture are generally presented by
an omniscient and omnipresent narrator, an invisible
observer such as the “camera eye.“ Yet, once a mode of
popular culture becomes adopted by a character in the text,
the form of entertainment no longer possesses those traits.
Thus, the role of popular culture in the text becomes
questionable.
CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the novels of Manuel Puig reflect the
unique history and literary history of Latin America and
Argentina. Puig has linked the undercurrents of Argentina's
repressive society with the contemporary narrative

techniques that catalogue his writing with his fellow

42
"Junior Boom? authors. I have proposed various critical
presuppositions which underlie the acts of reading
literature and its interpretation, and which provide the

tools which will be employed in my analysis of La traicion

de Rita Haygorth, Bogpitas pintadas, El beso de la mujer

arafia, and Sangre de amor correspondido.
An understanding of the themes of entrapment and

alienation, which are key elements to reading Puig's novels
must be gained. They exist on various levels and apply to
both the textual characters as well as the reader. The
fragmentary structure of the novels in question isolates the
text from.the characters, creating literal and figural gaps,
which in turn isolate the reader from a consolidated text.
Due to the deceptive nature of the texts, several readings
and interpretations arise that evoke the metaphor of the
palimpsest. The shifting authoritative voice combined with
deceptive narrative devices open up the text or devices to
the greatest possibility of interpretations.

The most prominent of these techniques is the use of
popular culture. I will show hOW’thiS mode of mass
entertainment serves more than a means for enjoyment or
escape for the characters. It also provides one narrative
voice among many that speaks for them and leads the reader
astray in the act of reading. Pop culture is converted into
a literary convention, blurring its extra-literary function
with the possible levels of its inter-textual role.

The novels that are not included in this study are: The

43
Buenos Aires Affair , Pubis angelical, Maldicién eterna a
gpien lea estas paginas, and Cae la noche tropical. Although
one can find the themes of alienation and entrapment in
these novels, the themes are not inherent features of the
texts. For example, The Buenos Aires Affair parodies the

detective novel, depending on irony and omission. This

novel, along with Pubis angelical, Maldicion eterna a gpien
lea estas paginas and Cae la noche tropical are texts based

upon straightforward narrative structures that do not
display overtly the themes of entrapment and alienation.
Rather, they all depend on plot, adventure and action
instead of the narrative conventions underlined in this
study. They do share one element in common with the texts
studied here: the undercurrent of repression runs through
each text, perhaps a constant mark left by Manuel Puig for

history to contemplate.

 

NOTES

1. The team “Junior Boom,“ as used by Donald Shaw’s
Nuevanarrativa hispanoamericana (Madrid: Catedra, 1985),
refers to those Latin American authors born after 1930. Other
critics, such as John Brushwood, David Foster, and Jean
Franco refer to the same authors as the “third generation of
the ’Boomf.” "Junior Boom“ implies a separate generation
from.its predecessor, yet it shows that it is a product of
the "Boom." On the other hand, the label “third generation
of the 'Boom" suggests a mere continuation of the narrative
techniques and ideas of the "Boom.“ Although this is true to
a certain extent, the “Junior Boom" explores new avenues of
technique and observation; therefore, the latter term is
preferable.

2. Although La traicion de Rita Hayporth spans from 1933
to 1948, the other novels focus on the years of the first

Peron regime (1946-1955) and the post-Peron era,
(concentrating on the forties and the fifties) and the
social, political and economic realities which resulted from
it. See Joseph Barager's Why Peron Came to Power:'Ipp
Bagkground to Peronismo in Argentina (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1968). For a study on the influence of Eva Perén on
Argentine society, also see Lucia Fischer-Pap's Exp:

Theodora. Evita Peron: gppress Theodora Incarnated
(Rockford, Ill.: LFP Publications, 1982).

3. For a precise explanation of Social Realism in an
Argentine context, see David W. Foster, Social Realism in the
Argentine Narrative (Chapel Hill: North Carolina
Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 1986).

4. My sources include: Giuseppe Bellini, Historia de la
ligeratura hispanoamericana (Madrid: Castalia, 1986); John S.
Brushwood, The Spanish Ameriggn Novel: A Twentieth-Centupy
Survey (Austin: Texas UP, 1975); and David W. Foster

Alternate Voices in the Contemporapy Latin American Narrative
(Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1985).

5. Paul De Man, Blindness and Insight: Essays in thg

Rhetoric of Contppporagy Criticism (Minneapolis: Minnesota
UP, 1983), 160.

6. Los hijos del limo (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1974),
23.

44

7. See M.H. Abrams, Glossapy of Literapy Terms, Fourth
Edition (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982). He
credits Julia Kristeva with the invention of the term
'intertextuality,' which he defines as “the multiple ways in
which any one literary text echoes, or is inescapably linked
to, other texts, whether by open or covert citations and
illusions, or by the assimilation of the features of an
earlier text by a later text, or simply by participation in a
common stock of literary codes and conventions“ (200).

8. In Brushwood’s analysis of Historia de una pasion, he
emphasizes Mallea's pessimistic view of man entrapped within
Argentine society: “The basis of much interpretation is
Mallea’s distinction between a ’visible Argentine' and an
'invisible Argentine.’ This difference refers to
superficial human relationships as contrasted with deep human
concerns--the kind that make an individual feel ultimately
inadequate with regard to his role in life. The visible
Argentine is the veneer of the society--false but accepted
values, forms, and prejudices; the invisible Argentine seeks
the most basic human values, to know the meaning of struggle
and of anguish.... [TJhe meaning of pessimism comes through
completely only if the reader understands that authentic life
is a search rather than a discovery (125).

9. Bellini contends that I'Es el caso de Mallea con sus
novelas de indagacion psicologica y de tematica existencial.
[Es una] influencia sobre las generaciones mas jévenes de
autores como Kafka, Mann, Proust, Gide, Faulkner, Dos Passos,
Hemingway“ (524).

10. Bellini calls the crisis of the 19405 'el
surgimiento de una atmosfera parricida, pero escencialmente
se produjo una busqueda afanosa, experimentalismo ilimitado y
audaz, insatisfaccién y negacién de precedentes que con su
peso modélico impiden e1 avdentimiento de nueva luz y mas
propia orientacién' (524).

11. Otras ingpisiciongs (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1960),
142-143.

12. ”Peronism in the Novels of Manuel Puig,” Th3
Historical Novel in Lgtin America: A Symposium, ed. Daniel
Balderston (Gaithersburg, MD: Hispamérica, 1986), 188.
Bacarisse provides a comparative analysis on the Peron years
and how they are reflected within Puig’s novels. She does
not explore the Peron regime with great depth. However, the
article does show the relationship of society and its context
within literature.

13. Bacarisse explains that Argentina resented the
United States for publishing the famous “Blue Book,“ yet
Peron used this resentment to his advantage: “this indictment
of Argentina's pro-Nazi activities undoubtedly helped Peron

45

in his election campaign just after the end of the Second
World War“ (190).

14. David W. Foster offers an analysis of the
demythification of the Argentine novel of the 19705 in

Alternate Voices in the Contemporapy Latin American Narrative
(Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1985), 60-106.

15. See David Lagmanovich, “La narrativa argentina de
1960 a 1970,“ Nueva narrativa hispanoamericana 2.1 (1972):
116. His article provides a brief overview of authors and
their literary tendencies of Argentinian narrative throughout
the decade.

16. The Act of Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP),
1978.

17. Bernard Murchland, The Age of Alienation (New York:
Random House, 1971), 29.

18. "Writing and Reading the Palimpsest: Donoso’s El
jardin de al lado,‘ Symposium 41.3 (1987): 202.

19. Terry Eagleton, Literapy Theopy: An Introduction to
Criticism (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1980), 178.

20. Stephanie Merrim, “Through the Film Darkly: Grade
.'8" Movies and Dreamwork in Tres tristes tigres and El beso

de la mujer arafia,“ Modern Language Studies 5.4 (1985): 300.

21. Popular culture has been evaluated in Puig's novels
as a means of escape for the characters as well as a means of
subjugation. See Stephanie Merrim’s article that suggests a
Freudian interpretation of the use of cinema and mass
culture. The following articles offer an in depth study of
the use of pop culture in Puig's novels: Lydia Hazera,
"Cinematic Influences in the Works of Cabrera Infante, Puig,
and vargas Llosa,“ The New Orleans Review 12.3 (1985): 43-52;
Naomi Lindstrom, "The Problem of Pop Culture in the Novels of
Manuel Puig,‘ The American Hispanist 4.30 (1978): 27-30;
Francine Masiello, "Jail House Flicks: Projections by Manuel
Puig,” gypposium 32 (1978): 15-24; Phyllis Mitchell, “The
Reel Against the Real: Cinema in the Novels of Guillermo
Cabrera Infante and Manuel Puig,“ Latin American American
Literapy Review 11 (1977): 22-39; and Frances wyers-Weber,
“Manuel Puig at the Movies," Hispanic Review 49 (1981):
163-181.

22. The folletin style was used extensively in
nineteenth-century literature. The work was presented in
installments ending at a climactic moment, leaving the reader
anxiously awaiting the next installment. For a more detailed
study of this form within Bogpitas pintadas, see Alicia
Andreau, "E1 Folletin: De Galdos a Manuel Puig,“ Revista

46

LA TRAICION DE RITA HAYWORTH:
DISJOINTED UNITY

La traicién de Rita Hayyorth (1968) sets the standard
for Manuel Puig’s following novels, revealing itself to be a
puzzling text which, as Emir Rodriguez Monegal points out,
I'no solo cuestiona la realidad que el novelista examina o
transcribe sino que empieza por cuestionar su propia
forma."1 The success of La traicion de Rita Hayyorth can be
attributed to its attractibility as a ”pop" novel as well as
its complex diversity on thematic, narrative and formal
structural levels that evokes further study. At first
glance, La traicion de Rita Hayyorth may seem like a mere
tale of those caught up in the fantasy world of pop
culture.2 ‘Yet, underneath that facade lies a potential of
deceit and entrapment as the reader participates in the
creation of La traicion, and as he-she attempts to reveal
the underpinnings of the text, the reader may actually
contribute to his-her own delusion. La traicién de Rita
Hayyorth takes place in Coronel Vallejos, a small, barren
town south of Buenos Aires, where “la vie ist ailleurs."3
The central focus seems to revolve around the Casals family
during the years of 1933 to 1948.

Roberto Casals, an unsuccessful businessman, is married

47

to Mita, a hospital pharmacist who longs to move back to the
life, family, and happiness she had abandoned in Buenos
Aires. Their son, Luis (Toto) Casals is an inquisitive,
naive boy whose growing years provide part of the structure
of the novel. Friends and relatives wander in and out of
the text, weaving disjointed stories that seem to hold
together. They all share one common bond: a life doomed to
mediocrity (Rodriguez Monegal, 361).4 The only source of
escape for the characters is by the absorption of mass
communication and pop culture through the means of the
cinema of the 19405. La traicion de Rita Hayyorth relates
the characters’ individual accounts separately, which
constitute an entire text. Yet, there seems to be a missing
narrative voice that binds the chapters into a cohesive
entity.

The reader plays a key role in the creation and
direction of this novel by searching for its elusive links.
One could maintain the level of a superficial reading which
consists in the story of the stagnant existence of the
Casals family and their acquaintances in the small town of
Coronel Vallejos. On the other hand, it is possible to
unmask narrative and thematic structures, conventions, and
characterization that expose the underlying potential

readings. La traicién de Rita Hayyorth is not what it
48

49
seems--a collective voice of dull existence represented by a
cohesive writing. Indeed, at times the text seems to flow
from.chapter to chapter, linked by inter—textual
acquaintances and extra-textual movies.5 For example, Toto
(whose “importance“ is questionable), participates, is the
focus, or is mentioned in every chapter.6 ‘Yet the
relationship that links this central character to the other
charaCters and narrative voices remains vague.

Each of the sixteen chapters reads like an isolated
installment from the “folletin,“ a form of popular
literature in Nineteenth Century Spain and Latin America.7
No chapter overtly relates to the next. Even its
chronology, which seems to systematically flow from 1933 to
1948, is deceptive. The very last chapter, dated 1933,
reveals Berto's unsent letter to his brother, leading the
text (and the reader) back to the chronological beginning.

The reader is posed with a dilemma that the novel may
be a closed text which provides solutions, or one that poses
more questions. The response would suggest the latter
supposition. Pere Gimferrer notes:

Estalla la escritura; se vuelve contra si misma, indaga

en su envés, se atomiza, 5e somete a critica....Se ha
desvanecido la ficcién del escritor-hablante unico, del
texto univoco....[E]l texto se bifurca, prolifera, se

multiplica, se ramifica: para decirlo con la
terminologia a1 uso, “e1 texto produce texto.8

La traicion de Rita Hayyorth not only presents a story but
also comments on the very act of its creation and
interpretation. Through its self-reflection, the levels of

possible readings multiply. The formal structure of the

50

novel, its narrative voice and its characters evoke the
diversity of readings in La traicién de Rita Hayyorth, which
lead to the physical, psychological, social and even textual
alienation and entrapment of the characters. The constantly
shifting narrative, thematic, structural planes weave
entanglements that cross and twist, leading the reader in a
multitude of directions at once that set the trap for his/
her potential deception and alienation.
THE TWISTED PASSAGE OF TIME

The most basic of these potentials is the foundation
and framework of the text. Puig presents the formal
structure in a systematic order which consists of two
symmetrical parts of eight chapters each. As noted before,
each chapter is indicated by a specific year, beginning with
1933, extending to 1948, and returning to 1933 in chapter
sixteen, that suggests a closed, circular text. However, the
final chapter reconsiders the organization of the text and
exposes the underlying readings evoked by Berto’s letter to
his brother, Jaime. Furthermore, it reflects the novel's
framework based on the dichotomy of presence and absence of
authorial control, narrative voice, character and action.
The scaffolding of La traicion de Rita Hayyorth depends not
just on what the text reveals through intra- and
inter-chapter dialogue and relationships, but also it
depends on what it represses. As the chapters progress, the
readings shift from one of discovery to one of concealment.

The novel exposes underlying texts while it covers,

51
establishing a pattern in the first chapter which presents
the text in a seemingly erratic fashion. On the surface,
chapter 1 is an everyday dialogue between a group of
chattering women, but underneath, it reveals the inherent
foundation of the novel of constant unexplained shifts and
chaos that not only alienate the characters from each other
and from.a sense of reality, but also marginalize the reader
through the lack of systematic pattern of events. This first
chapter provides the structural basis for the novel, setting
its pace, tone and style. Yet the novel’s foundation is
constructed on a shifting and deceitful ground, dependent on
the juxtaposition of presence and absence of pertinent
details. The discourse which takes place throughout the
chapter revolves around characters both present and absent,
with the emphasis on those who are not there. Furthermore,
the characters who participate in the dialogue are
interspersed and are spuriously deprived of identification.
The reader learns the characters' names only through
intermittent direct dialogue, making the identity of the
speaker difficult to ascertain. The reader discovers that it
is simpler to identify the characters through the subject of
the discourse and their relationship to it. For example,
Mita, who serves as the center of much of the conversation,
is referred to as Clara's sister: “Escribele a tu hermana,
que esta siempre deseando noticias" (10). The reader also
discovers that Mita's mother is a participant, but only by

the title of the chapter: "En casa de los padres de Mita, La

52
Plata 1933' (9). Clara’s relationship is made clear as
Mita’s sister, and because Clara refers to her addressee as
“Mama,“ the reader must infer that she is mother to both
Clara and Mita.

The reader is initiated immediately to the puzzle-like
dialogue that accompanies their embroidery session.
Although it appears to be mindless conversation to pass the
time, the dialogue reveals how chapter one begins to 'tejer
e1 texto:'9

---El punto cruz hecho con hilo marron sobre la tela de

lino color crudo, por esto te quedo tan lindo el
mantel.

---Me dio mas trabajo este mantel que el juego de
carpetas, que son ocho pares... si pagaran mejor las
labores me convendria tomar una sirvienta con cama y
dedicar mas tiempo a labores, una vez hecha 1a
clientela gno te parece?

—-—Las labores parece que no cansaran pero después

de unas horas se siente la espalda que esta un

poco dolorida.

---Pero Mita quiere que le haga un cubrecama para

la camita del nene, con colores vivos porque

tiene poca luz en los dormitorios.... (9)

This social activity provides the reader with vital clues
about the organizational and narrative structure. The
discourse compares to the embroidered bedspread mentioned in
the above dialogue, since both dialogue and bedspread
consist of a variety of shades and designs.10 Their bits
and pieces are meant to come together to form a finished
totality, yet neither the conversation or the bedspread ever

come to fruition. Rather, they remain in fragments waiting

to be pieced together like a puzzle and it is the reader's

53
responsibility to complete the task. Although it seems that
the conversation serves no purpose, it establishes the
dichotomy of presence and absence as well as the novel’s
alienating structure.

As stated previously, there is a complete lack of
narrative direction. No blatant clues are provided to
indicate any characteristics of the speakers or their
relationship to the text. The names of Clara, Mama, and
Violeta are revealed through direct address, and as quickly
as their identities are ascertained, other characters
appear, this muddles the discourse even further. One of the
topics of conversation converts into interlocutor.

Adela, who is pitied for working such long hours and
spending a great portion of her salary for 'anteojos de
carey legitimo' (13), enters without warning or notice.

Once Adela is present, the dialogue shifts away from
her and focuses on something or someone absent. The
participants of the conversation are isolated from their own
discourse, not only alienating them from their subjects, but
also sending them.into marginalized existence. Faithful to
the text, the dialogue focuses on absence.11 Very little
information is provided about the characters participating
in the conversation, making it difficult to follow the
interconnecting dialogical threads.

The reader is deprived of any detail that could attach
him emotionally to a character who actively contributes to

the discourse. The reader knows that Mama longs to have Mita

54
return to Buenos Aires to live, but no revealing information
focuses upon Mama. Instead, the conversation shifts away
from the speaker. Clara, Mama, and Papa (who appears
suddenly on page 12), Adela, and Violeta remain faceless
characters. On the other hand, the text reveals a deceptive
focus of the chapter and the confused direction of the text:
the isolated mediocre existence of Mita, Berto and Toto
Casals who are geographically alienated from the family. As
with the rest of the text, chapter one jumps from one
subject to another, never staying on one topic for long.
While it seems that the Casals family is the main concern,
the chatter shifts to the chicken coop, emphasizing the lack
of excitement or common goals in their lives. To pass the
time, the dialogue is filled with free association and
people become intermingled with banal chores, as Jonathan
Tittler suggests, "Mita is just another topic of
conversation, along with the embroidery, the movies and the
dirty laundry“ (Tittler, 83). No one seems to respond
directly to the dialogue, instead each speaker seems to be
alienated in the margins of his own “text,“ observing from
the periphery of the dialogue, just as the interlocutors
seem to do:
—-—A mi me parece injusto que se haya casado en
ese pueblo en vez de ayudar a tu mama después
de tantos sacrificios para hacerla estudiar.

-—-Los anteojos nuevos de Adela son de carey
legitimo.

—--Perd6neme no lo ayudo a matar el pollo porque
me impresiona, pero papa se lo va a agradecer
con toda e1 alma.

55

---Mita tampoco queria mirar cuando yo mataba un
pollo, pero después se lo comia todo.

---La que mas aspaviento hacia era aquella
compafiera de Mita de la Facultad, la hija.(13)

Due to its incongruence, the reader cannot follow a
logical dialogical pattern.

Characters who are both participants in the dialogue as
well as referents in the conversation surreptitiously enter
and exit the text, causing its fragmentation and constantly
shifting its focus. Chapter one is presented as if the
reader were watching a movie rather than reading a text.12

One must follow the camera-eye as it focuses on one
character and then suddenly shifts to another; or more
abruptly one must follow the spatial distortion as the scene
switches without warning from.the conversation in the house
of Mita's parents to the dialogical exchange in the chicken
coop. The camera-eye technique reinforces both the script
style of presentation of chapter one and its evasive focus.
One topic of conversation does seem to weave through

the chapter: the plight of Mita, Berto and Toto Casals.

The details provided about the family stem from.the
periphery of the text. Mita and her family are created by
insinuations and sparse details. Mita's image is painted
with shadows, indistinguishable characteristics imbued with
her marginal existence. She is described by what she does
not possess. She lives in a dry town--Corone1 Vallejos-—
where nothing flourishes nor does it fit her desires, as

Clara points out: “Mita debe extrafiar en Vallejos la vida

56
que hacia aca” (13). Instead, she works in a hospital
pharmacy which, in Violeta’s eyes, keeps her from.making
worthwhile her mother’s sacrifices for helping her pay for
her schooling. Mita’s marriage to Berto took her away from
Buenos Aires and is responsible for her absence (and her
mother’s suffering).

Mita is described with nostalgia through her “college
relationship“ with Sofia Cabalus, who of course, is also
absent. The intent of the conversation is to persuade Sofia
to write a letter to persuade Mita to return so that Sofia’s
father can provide her a job at the university. Ironically,
the subject of letters that never get mailed becomes a key
to La traicién de Rita Hayyorth. Mita’s involvement in
chapter one is based on absence, both textually and
subtextually. Her character development is based on her
repression within the text--as a subject and as we shall
see, as an alienating example for other characters.

The same is true for Toto and Berto. Toto is referred
to indirectly as 'el nene," Mita’s son, providing little
attention that he will be a structural and thematic link to
the rest of the text. As for Berto, he is treated as a
secondary subject. He is introduced in passing, without a
name and in reference to the movies: "El marido de Mita es
idéntico a Carlos Palau, siempre lo dije' (11). The
speakers’ treatment of Berto demonstrate not only their
resentment of him for stealing Mita far away to a barren

existence, but it also indicates the characters’ proclivity

57
to relate their existence to the fantasy world of mass
culture. The only other detail provided about Berto is the
condition of his stomach, a subject hardly relevant to his
character development. Berto and his family reflect the
image presented by the first chapter: isolated shadows
entrapped in their dull existence.

Chapter one ends as it began, that is, reminiscing
about life when Mita was present. It also establishes a
structural pattern that falsely imitates circularity.
Chapter one, like the following chapters, does not finish at
its starting point, rather, it spirals around uncovering
more possible texts as it is read. Thus, the first chapter
accomplishes several purposes: first its establishes the
tone, style, language, form, and structure; it introduces
characters; distracts the reader by forcing him to search
for the chapter’s underpinnings; and thus deceives him"
Jonathan Tittler points out that the remaining chapters
affirm the alienating narrative structure of La traicion de
Rita Hayyorth: dialogue (chapters I, II and IV), interior
monologue (III, V-XI), and assorted forms of writing
(XII—XVI) (81). The novel goes from direct discourse and
truncated dialogue (the one-sided telephone conversation

with Choli in chapter four) to "unedited“ thoughts which
are meant for the characters alone. The last third of the
novel consists of written samples provided by the
characters. Chapter thirteen is directed to an audience,

appearing in the fonm of a school composition, (’Concurso

58
anual de composiciones literarias’ "Tema libre”: “La
pelicula que mas me gusté,“ por José Casals, 2° afio
nacional, Div.B,) The following writing is meant for one
person in chapter fourteen (anonimo dirigido al regente del
internado del colegio "George Washington", and Carta de
Berto, chapter sixteen), and others are personal reflections
for their eyes only (chapter twelve, diario de Esther, and
chapter fifteen, cuaderno de pensamientos de Herminia). The
novel’s narrative structure goes from direct communication
to the isolated self-alienated text that communicates with
no one.

On one level La traicion de Rita Hayyorth reveals more
information about the characters through the progression of
the text, however, by the end of chapter sixteen, the text
seems to have presented few details about the characters’
lives or their existence. Instead of presenting more direct
clues about the characters early in the text, new ones are
constantly introduced up to the penultimate chapter. Every
chapter is a closed installment that tells its own tale and
does not relate to what precedes or follows it.

For example, the novel begins with free—flowing dialogue
and ends with a one-sided attempt at communication that is
destroyed. The final presentation of Berto’s letter in
chapter sixteen seems to answer many questions posed by the
text. The reader is presented with basic information as to
why Jaime’s son, Héctor, is living with the Casals family,

the reasons for Berto’s resentment and blame toward Jaime,

59
and Berto’s agressive attitude. At the same time, the
sudden shift back to 1933 places the integrity of the
narrative structure into question.

Chapter sixteen is presented in epistolary form and as
if the reader were witnessing Berto in the act of writing.
Although the time frame is displaced, the attempt to
communicate with his brother seems as if it were taking
place in the text’s present. Thus, the text splits into two
directions.

On the one hand, chapter sixteen finalizes the text
entitling the contents to no options and falsely closing its
pages. Berto’s life, business, and future is a failure
because of his brother:

Qué lastima haber dejado e1 colegio a los quince afios,

eso nunca comprendi como pudiste decidirlo. Si

necesitabas ayuda en la fébrica te podrias haber
conseguido cualquier muchacho de confianza aqué
necesidad habia de que me sacaras de la escuela,
simplemente porque necesitabas alguien de confianza con
vos? No, Jaime, eso nunca pude comprenderlo, Como
pudiste sacarme del colegio, antes de que pudiera

hacerme de algun arma para luchar en la vida. Y

después se te ocurrio vender la fabrica e irte a Buenos

Aires. Y te fuiste. La cuestion es que el senor haga

su gusto, y siempre has hecho lo que has querido

(298-299).

Berto’s letter explains his behavior and motives displayed
in the first fifteen chapters and the text concludes with
Berto’s resigning himself to his mediocre destiny, which
carries with it his family’s future. However, by
chronologically 'misplacing' the final chapter that belongs

to the year 1933, the textual structure becomes spiral,

returning the story and the reader not to the beginning,

60
rather to chapter two. The family maid, Amparo, interrupts
Berto while in the midst of composing the very same letter
found in chapter sixteen (the same type of chronological
displacement is seen in Boguitas pintadas as well). The
novel now sets on a shifting and deceptive foundation, one
dependent on an unsent letter that compromises both
intertextual and extratextual relationships, that is, those
bound in the novel and those established with the reader.
New discourses emerge that were non-existent in the
preceding chapters. The relationships between family
members become more evident and yet more obscure. The
letter may explain the situation of the Casals family, but
it also posits more questions, particuarly with those
dealing with Berto’s inablity to cope with his life and
family. For example, Hector’s presence is never fully
explained. The reader is told that he came to live with the
Casals family as a seven year—old youngster because of his
mother’s illness, but the reader is not informed to the
extent that her recovery is feasible. Nor is Hector’s
future with the Casals family made clear. One must also
speculate Berto’s relationship with Héctor and the effect
that the letter’s destruction will have on their destinies.
No questions are fully answered and the reader is left
alienated from the text with more dilemmas to resolve.
The exposure of the letter in chapter sixteen also presents
the duplicity of the dialogue between the reader and

characters. The relationships between reader, text and

61
characters formed in the prior chapters may be subsumed
through the possibilities created by Berto’s letter. The
reader is faced with new points of departure for
(re)interpreting the text. One new perspective, for
example, can be seen through the title of the novel. One
must question the meaning of the phrase, "La traicion de
Rita Hayworth“ as well as its relationship to the text.
Lucille Kerr notes that:
...the title has a crucial and also curious relation to
its text. Certain issues are raised by any such heading
because of its complex relation to its “body'—-titles,
as we know, appear to precede, float above, and follow
their “bodies“; they help us to read, but are also
themselves read through, their texts. Puig’s title
embodies a paradoxical movement that both aids and
impedes our reading of the novel. The title sets up a
reading, an interpretation, that it also undercuts. It
is precisely through its dialectical, reflexive moves
that this title offers a way of understanding some of
the connections among the novel’s fictional and textual
figures, as well as the relations between is narrative
structure and thematic material.13
In the case of La traicién de Rita Hayyorth, the referent is
quite unclear, due to the grammatical function of the
preposition 'de' as a double genitive (Kerr, 28). Rita
Hayworth, who appears as an extra-textual character in the
reiterated movie, Sangre y arena, can be interpreted as both
a subject (the betrayer) and an object (the betrayed), thus
her relationship to the text and the reader is questionable.
In one way, Rita Hayworth mirrors the world of the
reader, providing a false point of perspective, distancing
and potentially alienating the reader from the novel’s
fictional world. Her prominence as a Hollywood actress (as

well as other movie stars that become part of La praigién ge

62
Rita Hayworth) shifts the focus outside of the novel. Rita
seems to have no direct involvement in the text. However,
she serves as an intra-textual link and leit-motif through
the chapters as she appears in Toto’s movie reiterations and
everyday speech. She is an escape mechanism for Toto (as
well as for other characters), an alienating device from
reality, and a deceptive basis for judgement. Toto is
enchanted with her existence as a beautiful movie star, but
it is his father’s reaction to her that serves as a basis of
Toto’s feelings:
...y saliamos del cine caminando y papa decia que le
gustaba Rita Hayworth mas que ninguna artista, y a mi
me empieza a gustar mas que ninguna también, a papa le
gusta cuando le hacia "toro, toro” a Tyrone Power, él
arrodillado como un bobo y ella de ropa transparente
que se veia el corpifio, y se le acercaba para jugar a1
toro, pero se reia de él, que al final 10 deja. Y a
veces pone cara de mala, es una artista linda pero que
hace traiciones. (82)
Toto realizes that although his father likes Rita more than
any other movie star, she is capable of betrayal. Her
thematic presence links the chapters, and at the same time
places the relationships between title and text, reader and
text, reader and fiction, and characters at odds. Nothing
is what it seems on the surface. Rita’s thematic and
structural significance is irresolvable, which leads us
again to the end of the novel, where Berto reflects the
image of Rita Hayworth, playing the role of both the
betrayer and the betrayed.“
Both the title of the novel and the presentation of

Berto’s letter in the last chapter put the text at odds.

63
They both suggest an ordered text, but in reality offer a
chaotic presentation. From a structural standpoint, Rita
and Berto betray the novel, leading the reader "inside'I and
I'outside" the text as well as back and forth through the
chapters.

Berto’s letter also compromises the novel’s narrative
structure through its form and its relationship to the rest
of the text. The letter, although in written form, is
presented as if it were direct discourse with Jaime,
emulating the act of free-flowing speech. Berto has the
opportunity to edit and revise his text, but he chooses to
let his pen run away from him, apologizing for his irritable
mood:

Perdoname e1 largo de la carta, pero son las cuatro de

la tarde y no tengo absolutamente nada que

hacer,...perdoname que te hable de cosas tristes, pero
es que hoy tengo unas ganas tan grandes de estirar los

brazos y abrazarla fuerte a mama. (295)

Instead of editing his letter, Berto opts to destroy his
creation and the very act of communication.

This final act of the novel is based on denial and
effacement. The letter is an attempt to communicate with
someone who is absent in the text and who seems to refuse to
reciprocate Berto’s wish for dialogue: 'La verdad es que no
te perdono que no me hayas escrito durante tanto tiempo...‘
(292). The intention is perhaps more to vent Berto’s anger
than to reach his brother. He promises to destroy the

letter, a threat which if carried out, would efface the text

and render useless the entire act of communication. The

64

final moment of the novel reveals the act of textual
betrayal. Berto’s letter seems to be the missing link that
structurally binds the text. Yet, the final sentence is one
of definite rejection: 'esta carta va a1 tacho de la basura'
(299), undermining the scaffolding of the novel and denying
the text of the very act of writing. In other words, the
destruction of the letter endangers the structure on which
the novel rests.
THE SHIFT OF NARRATIVE VOICE

The narrative form of La traicion de Rita Hayworth also
compromises the novel’s stability. The reader cannot
depend on the textual guidance from a particular author,
narrator or discourse. Rather, the reader co—creates the
text through the act of reading. Puig seems to have stepped
out of the text, delegating the authorial and narrative
voice to the characters. Rodriguez Monegal points out that
"e1 autor era responsable 5610 de la recopilacion y del
montaje. Ordenaba los textos..., los titulaba, también daba
titulo a la novela’I (391). The characters do not serve as
mere fictive entities, rather they play the roles of
creator, story-teller, and actor. Although the characters
may be unaware of their actions, the reader is forced to
interpret the text by the various textual clues given by
these multi—faceted characters, and becomes aware of the
process of the text’s creation itself.

As author, each character “writes“ his or her own text.

The "reality“ created stems from.the character himself

65

along with the products of cinematic mass culture that
he/she has drawn into his existence. Thus, each character
mdrrors his own text, unable to become an active part of
another’s creation. Rather, he is an end product of the
combination of mass culture pulp and his imagination. This
perhaps explains the textual isolation and entrapment as it
reflects the marginalization of each character’s existence
and participation in the novel. One cannot actively or
knowingly participate in a fiction written by another; there
are no co-creators, instead several authors unwittingly
offer separate entries to form La traicion de Rita Hayyorth.

The evidence of an outside authorial voice appears
through the ordered compilation of the text. Beyond the
role of “editor,“ authorial control seems to have
disappeared, even in the chapters where one expects some
authorial direction. For example, although chapters I, II,
and IV are presented in dialogue form, no particular
authorial voice controls or directs the interactions. In
these chapters, the characters are intra-textually distanced
from each other. Both chapter one and two display disparate
conversations among characters that demonstrate little
clarity unless the reader imagines himself watching the
scene from the audience. For example, in chapter two the
dialogue jumps back and forth between Amparo and Felisa, two
lower class servants who are attempting to keep Toto quiet
so Berto can finish writing a letter (revealed in chapter

sixteen to be the unsent key correspondence to his brother,

66

Jaime). More importantly, the text reveals that Berto’s
articipation is more than passive; he, like the reader,
learns his information which becomes his text, through
eavesdropping. This second chapter revolves around Berto
who not only listens to the servants’ gossip about his
failures but also who hears what Adela and Mita had said
about him (information also withheld until chapter sixteen).

Chapter two is created through Berto’s eyes, and it is
as if the reader stood behind the curtains with him,
listening to all that is said. Other techniques are used to
obfuscate textual control. Choli’s truncated "dialogue“
with Mita in chapter four emulates the script pattern of the
previous chapters, and it also lacks a necessary element:
half of the dialogue. A common scene in the movies and
theatre presents one person talking with a character on the
other end of the telephone. Vital to the interpretation of
the scene are the reactions, gestures and tone of the
speaker on stage. However, without visual cues, this
technique in literary fonm presents important obstacles.
Although the reader is presented with Choli’s half of the
dialogue, it may be the absent participant, Mita, who
possesses the virtual authorial control of the conversation.
On the other hand, Choli represents the active narrative
voice. Along with attempting to interpret the missing
dialogue on literal, thematic and figurative levels, the
reader must also ponder who is controlling the text. The

reader himself may become entrapped, as he must, perhaps

67
unaware, take on the role of author, of creator. Through
the act of inferring the missing dialogue, the reader must
piece together a two-way conversation. In other words, the
meaning, text(s) and context(s) all must be created by the
reader, placing him on a privileged level, which alienates
him.from.his creation.

Textual authority is questionable throughout the entire
novel. The absence of a controlling authorial voice mirrors
the problematics of narrative voice. There is a key element
that differentiates the voices, yet like the lack of
authorial control, narrative voice is deceptive. Although
the author seems to be absent, there are many narrators in
La traicion de Rita Hayyorth. Chapter one and two offer
dialogues with no controlling narrative voice. Each speaker
"narrates'I his own contribution to the conversation. The
remaining chapters (excluding chapter four) are presented in
first person, either through interior mpnologue (chapters
III, V-XI) or written form (chapters XII-XVI). Eleven
different characters narrate these non-dialogue chapters
with only Toto narrating more than once. There seems to be
no continuous voice that binds the text. Until chapter
fifteen, the text continually introduces new characters
instead of developing the already present ones. The result
is voices placed on voices that create a textual cacophony.
But one element converts it into a discernible melody: the
underlying discourses about the mediocre lives amongst the

voices that link them.

68

Manuel Puig has pointed out that the voices of'pa
traicién de Rita Hayworth represent a collective unconscious
that reflects the Argentine society in which he was raised
(Christ, 23). In the text, the collectivity has been
effaced. Indeed the voices share common themes and forms,
but they also chop up the text and entrap the reader within
the fragmentations of text while the reader attempts to sort
them out. The characters are alienated from each other on a
textual level, entrapped within the boundaries of their
creations unless they become topics of other chapters rather
than its participants. Unwittingly they feed off of each
other and the circumstances of their micro-cosmos that
imprison them. The characters and their discourse often
focus on beyond the periphery of their chapters. Characters
from the literary margins seep in from other dialogues or
chapters as well as from.the extra-literary fantasy world of
the movies, thus deceiving the direction of the text.
Soledad Bianchi states that:

...por semejanzas o disimilitudes, por paralelismo, por

oposicién, los discursos responden y se anticipan a los

del otro. En un sentido mas restringido, numerosas

citas y palabras de extranos discuten con las de los

narradores-personajes, que también se interrogan y

reflexionan interiormente, dialogando con sus propios

enunciados. (838-839)
In other words, the characters unknowingly entrap the others
in their textual worlds, and at the same time offer
prejudicial information to the reader with which he will use

in the interpretation of the following chapters. No

profound communication passes between characters. Instead,

69

the 'narradores-personajes“ offer their texts as if no one
else were witnessing the creation of the text. The reader,
in turn, benefits from these self-reflections without the
knowledge of the characters (Bianchi, 850).15 However, the
forms of discourse which the characters employ act as a
deceptive obstacle to the interpretation of the novel. Puig
uses true speech, interior monologue and the act of writing
in La traicion de Rita Hayyorth to convey his characters’
actions and emotions. These techniques demonstrate the
characters’ capacity for free thinking and the ability to
communicate. However, they seem to depend on extra-textual
sources such as the movies, radio broadcasts, and novels
that become infused into their personas in order to truly
express their mundane existence and the reality in which
they live.
CINEMATOGRAPHY AS A NARRATIVE DEVICE

Sources from outside the text include novels and
elements drawn from or patterned on mass culture, such as
radio sports-casts, and Hollywood movies from the 19405.
However, unlike more traditional forms of discourse, they
pose problems for the reader. They play ambiguous roles that
seem to both transcend and subvert the text at the same
time, effacing the margins between the literary and
extra-literary world.

Extra-literary sources serve as both techniques and

themes in La traigién de Riga Hayyorth. The allusion to pop

culture, especially Hollywood "Grade B“ movies from the

70
19405, permeates the novel creating the narrative voice and
the language of many of the characters. Although this will
be discussed in greater detail in the analysis of particular
characters, it suffices to mention here that the use of film
as a technique influences the perception and values of both
characters as well as readers.

Pop culture not only serves as a narrative device, but
also cbntributes to entrapment and alienation for both
characters and reader. This form of communication is
generally perceived as a spectacle and form of mass
entertainment generated from the Western world, more

specifically from Hollywood, that transcends the barrier of
social classes, and in this case, crosses the borders that
separate fantasy and reality. The movies, music and
ideologies presented stem.from what David Bordwell terms as
"classical narration Hollywood films that are easily
comprehensible... and are bound together by its unity of
time, space, and action."16 In La traicion de Rita
Hayyorth the use of the Hollywood spectacle serves as an
escape from reality for the novel’s characters as well as a
model of another reality to which they desire to transcend.
Stars such as Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Norma Shearer and
Rita Hayworth possess the values that Toto (not to mention
others) wishes to emulate. Through the movies, “they create
a star persona which recurs from film to film,'” as Toto
points out: “Norma Shearer es una artista que nunca es mala'

(37). Thus, because of the movies that they have previously

71
seen, the spectators, in this case, Toto, carry certain
exigencies in viewing a film. On the other hand, the movie
reflects those demands by creating absolute truths,
eventually shaping the spectators’ perception of reality of
both in and beyond the film. The films that appear in.pa
traicion de Rita Hayyorth are all predictable, complete with
happy or idealistic endings, that seem to balance the dull
realism that the characters attempt to mask.

Although those who escape to the movies seem to lose
themselves in the romantic ideals of the screen, they can
distinguish between that and the reality which surrounds
them. However, it does not deter them from trying to
imitate the social prototypes created by their favorite
stars. The gap between life and the existence that mass
culture portrays willingly becomes blurred in the eyes of
the beholder. The cultural, historical and political values
portrayed by the glitter of mass culture is diffused into
the spectators of the films. The viewers not only absorb
its values and ideologies but its myths as well. Choli, for
example, attempts to reflect the images of Hollywood no
matter the cost. It does not seem to be important to her
what exactly Hollywood is or to what extreme she must go in
order to emulate its image, exposing her naivté during her
conversation with Mita: 'Yo me quise morir cuando vi lo
lejos que estaba Estados Unidos de Inglaterra, yo creia que
Londres era la parte mas chic, pero mas cerca' (61).

Choli’s main concern is that she can emulate the values

72
portrayed in the movies: "Y asi quedo bien, sera que soy muy
alta, tengo un tipo de norteamericana“ (53). Choli has the
advantage of reflecting the image of the Hollywood woman,
especially since she sells its products:
Con turbante. El turbante oscuro me hace muy rara,
claro que ahora teniendo a mi disposicion todos los
cosmeticos de inspectora de Hollywood Cosméticos sin
pagar, con los montones de muestras gratis que llevo, -
puedo probar qué es lo que me queda mejor. (52)
She believes that the product’s name will convert her into
the image of someone like Mecha Ortiz, the Argentine actress
who had transcended her existence into a “Hollywood-type
star." Choli’s occupation transforms her into that “other
reality," blurring the margins between her existence and the
life in the movie screen:
Con trajes de brin de sport, amplios, con un buen
cinturén ajustado para lucir la cintura, y con el
cabello bien cepillado hasta que parezca que la melena
es de seda, que bailando en una boite tiras la cabeza
para atras y caeria ese pelo en cascada provocativo
sobre los hombros, y si hubiera una despedida en un
aeropuerto el viento lo hace flotar y pareceria
emocionante. (53-54)
Choli’s real life is not acceptable to her, she has
dismdssed it just as her imitated life was rejected by her
late husband: “Si me arreglaba un poco él se me reia, como
diciendo ’apara qué?" (51). The result is a shell of a
woman whose outer presence reflects her alienation from.the
rest of the world, or perhaps more exact, from her own true
identity. She is entrapped in the image that the ideals of
pop culture has helped her to create, within a marginalized

existence that she cannot comprehend. Choli’s final comment

woman whose outer presence reflects her alienation from.the

73

rest of the world, or perhpas more exact, from her own true
identity. She is entrapped in the image that the ideals of
pop culture has helped her to create, within a marginalized
existence that she cannot comprehend. Choli’s final comment
to Mita confirms her imprisonment in a life that offers her
little. The only solution is to escape and pretend to be
someone else from.that “other reality:”

gDe dénde sacan el coraje esas mujeres, para hacer esa

vida? La ladronas de joyas, 0 las espias. Hasta las

mismas contrabandistas. Pero hacen otra vida. Mas

interesante. Porque eso es lo principal, que la gente

te vea pasar y diga “qué interesante es esa

mujer...quién sabe quien es...." (68)
Not even Choli can answer that question. She, like the
other characters in La traicién de Rita Hayyorth, view the
products of mass communication as a means of buffering their
daily existence in Argentina, incorporating spectacle with
reality. On the othe hand, the use of mass communication
that permeates the text poses dilemmas for the reader. Pop
culture as a mode of entertainment serves as a means of
escape and a fonm of communication and narration.
Furthermore, these products of pop culture represent a
reality in the literary world. However, one must wonder
exactly what world(s) it reflects and at what leve1(s).
The elements of mass communication that appear in.pa
traicién are extracted from the extra—literary world. Thus,
the reader is placed in a precarious position to approach
the novel through them. The products of Hollywood are

narratized versions from the characters’ memory. edited and

revised according to their needs and desires. What appears

74

in the text is the contextual product of the characters’
conscious and unconscious. Therefore, pop culture in the
text becomes much more relevant than what appears on a
primary surface.

The reader’s position is also challenged from an
reader’s standpoint. Maria Salgado contends that:

...es que el lector se deje envolver en una novela que

le fuerza a confrontar un mundo de una mediocridad

abrumadora. Examinada de cerca, sin embargo, la

mediocridad revela estar estrechamente ligada al cine,

y es ésta precisamente la razén de que el lector se

siente atrapado, ya que responde intuitivamente a la

red de mitos y clichés provenientes del cine que

reconoce porque también son parte de su marco de

referencia cotidiano.18
The social prototypes, ideologies, values, and myths that
the reader has absorbed from pop culture in the
extra-literary
world influences the reading and interpretation of the use
of pop culture in literary levels. Moreover, the elements
drawn from.pop culture are so imbued in the essence of both
text and character that the margins between literal,
figural, thematic, and technical levels have become
practically indistinguishable. The reader is offered many
footprints to follow from the text, and from his/her
extra—textual "library,“ thus the potential for many
readings abound in La traicién ge Rita Hayworth.

The possibilities of several levels of discourse is no
more evident than through the characters who wander in and

out of the constantly shifting text (a dependent

characteristic of Sangre de amor correspondido as well).

75
The dichotomy of presence and absence is evident beyond the
physical realm. The characters contribute to alienation and
entrapment on narrative and linguistic levels as well, not
so much through what they reveal, but what they repress in
the text. Their actions, stagnant attitudes and
fragmentarily presented language borrowed from pop culture
lead the reader down several paths. Moreover, their
development and participation in the novel establishes its
distorted tone and direction.

Toto Casals, Berto and Mita’s young effeminate son,
seems to be the nexus around which the text revolves.
However, that point of conjecture is somewhat questionable.
Certainly his name is mentioned by every character that
appears, and Toto is a topic of conversation more often than
not, but on the other hand, Toto represents a vehicle for
outward discourse between the other characters that
contributes to the interpretation of the text. Their
presence is entrapped within the development of Toto’s
image. The characters, though, do not have the opportunity
to evolve, alienated from the texts that they have helped to
create. The nuances of Toto Casals fill the pages of.pa
traicion de Rita Hayyorth, but his presence is deceptive
since he never seems to develop as a character.

Toto binds the text together, yet as a major character,
he is quite underdeveloped. Although he is introduced in
his infancy by mere mention in chapters one and two, little

information is provided about him--his full name, José L.

76
Casals, does not even appear until chapter thirteen under
the title of his high school composition. Toto appears alone
as a six year-old child in chapter three through the form of
interior monologue. This private form of communication
suggests that a profound abundance of personal insight might
be offered. However, Toto’s first appearance reads like an
edited movie script, jumping from one scene to another,
providing the pattern for his remaining appearances. Little
attention is dedicated to Toto himself. Rather, the focus
constantly shifts outward to reflect his innermost
anxieties: the fear of abandonment and living in the
margins of the nuclear family and social circles.

Toto’s identification is as elusive as the text(s) into
which he is diffused. Even the characters in the novel
recognize his potential to be composed of several layers:

...y parece que basta mirarlo un poco que se le

transparenta como era mas Chico, como una cebollita, se

le quita una hoja y adentro hay otra cebolla igual,

pero mas Chiquita y mas blanca, el Toto de los ocho

afios....(151-152)

He is made up by several texts authored, narrated and viewed
by both Toto as well as the characters who surround him,
either directly or from.the margins of the text. Thus the
reader receives a broad description of Toto about which this
character is unaware. On the other hand, Toto is a
fragmented character who matches the descriptions of him,
The details provided by other characters shape Toto

physically and emotionally in a rather vague manner. For

example, Choli reveals that “no puede seguir tan lindo, va a

77

cumplir ocho afios, y lo encuentro divino" (49). Many
impertinent details about Toto are offered, such as his
propensity for gossip and being a tattletale, neither of
which contribute profound information to his development in
the text. As insignificant as those details seem to be,
they form, shape, and “le da su real fisonomia: trazos,
rasgos, matices, luces varias."19

Through the comments that the other characters
unconsciously offer to the reader, Toto mirrors their
mediocre existence and desires to escape alienation. The
outward texts that they have provided send them deeper into
the margins and into intertextual isolation. The
characters, including Toto, are unable to speak for
themselves, hence their discourse consists of prejudicial
information about others.

Most often it is Toto who plays the role of
spectator, narrator, author and spokesperson. He is the
voice for others, such as Paquita who reveals her thoughts
through a reiterated dialogue with Toto. Her entire
interior monologue takes place while waiting in line for
confession. Yet, her thoughts seem to have been invaded by
Toto’s essence. Paquita lashes out at him and at the same
time reveals her innermost problems to the reader:

ano oiste si tu papa y tu mama hablaban de la Celia?

“alguien de mi colegio se escapo a la casa en el recreo

otra vez“ no les digas a tu papa y tu mama que te

pregunté de la Celia "a los padres no hay que

ocultarles nada“...él cree que sabe todos mis

secretos.... (178)

The characters share their individual worlds, and Toto has

78
unwittingly aided the others in every single chapter to
create and narrate isolated texts of which he constantly
jumps in and out. He not only represents and mirrors the
other characters, but also reflects his true image through
the eyes of the others (and vice versa) .

Pamela Bacarisse notes that Toto embodies everyone
else’s problems and anxieties.20 He is the end product of
alienated images and thoughts, most influenced by the
repression and abandonment of his parents, Berto and Mita.
They are directly responsible for his escape into the
fantasy of the movies and in an indirect way, they form
Toto’s contribution to the text.

Toto’s relationship with his parents is made clear from
the beginning, where his silence surfaces as he becomes the
tepic of conversation. Chapter two clearly reveals that Toto
is the apple of his mother’s eye and a nuisance to his
father, Berto, as he yells at Amparo to keep him quiet:

" iAmparo! lHace callar a ese chico que estoy trabajandol'
(23) . Yet, he makes sure that Toto dressed neatly to meet
Mita at the hospital pharmacy where she works. When Toto
does appear in chapter three, his relationship with his
parents is already established.

Speaking for the first time on his own behalf, Toto’s
interior monologue is interspersed with free association
that jumps from one subject to another, mixing fantasy with
reality. In one sentence alone, he changes the subject

three times, making it difficult to both understand his

79
thoughts as well as distinguish reality from escape:

Tio Perico, siempre en el bar con los del campo,

después de la feria de los novillos van a jugar al

truco, no van nunca al cine y las plantas del fondo del

mar es una lastima que se coman a los pescaditos lindos

de todos colores, se tendrian que comer a los pescados

malos viejos con cara de pulpos y de tiburones pero en

los cartoncitos mama dice que la cinta que mas lujosa

va a quedar es El gran Ziegfeld que por fin van a dar —

e1 jueves (44).
CEhe sole manner of knowing Toto is through his language, one
tJnat is alienated, jumbled and borrowed from.both what he
hues absorbed from others and the extra-literary world.21

The interior monologue of chapter three demonstrates
Twato’s inability to cope with the real world. He is left
aLLone to entertain himself while Berto “snatches away" Mita
f<>r the daily siesta, lest he be punished by his threatening
feather: “nunca te he pegado pero el dia que te ponga la
amino encima te deshago'I (37). Thus, Toto must pass the time
iri silence, stifled by his repressive father and from.the
fear of abandonment of his mother. He is closed off both
temporally and spacially from the maternal figure with whom
Ire identifies. Toto’s daily alienation forces him to turn to
free association which paints his reality by sheltering it
and replacing it with a more acceptable one. His private
recourse allows him to escape the boundaries of entrapment
janosed by his own father.

In Toto’s first escape into fantasy, the language,
Values and images reflect those of a six year-old boy. Fairy

tlales and movie plots become infused with everday reality.

AS the fantasies appear in the written text, they have gone

80
through the restructuring process to solve the problems and
anxieties that flow through Toto’s mind and to invent a
happy ending to make the escape into fantasy worthwhile.
His edited version includes what Bacarisse states as typical
for an immature individual:
He may actually change what he has seen so that he
himself can become part of it, a kind of "secondary
revision"; or he will apply its circumstances to a
fantasized version of his own life, with not only
himself but characters from his everyday existence as
protagonists. (18)
The result is a pastiche that includes members from the
realistic plane, such as Mita; friendly figures from his
imgination--'pajaritos, chiquitos, Shirley Temple and
Ginger Rogers;" and those that threaten to stifle him--'un
gitano malo, un gato rabioso, plantas carnivoras.‘ Whereas
the distinction between reality and fantasy may be blurred,
the relationship between the two is identifiable.
Immediately preceding Toto’s fantasy, his mind wanders
to the discourse that justifies his escape. He must fill up
the time quietly in order to avoid his father’s ire: 'aQué
dibujo hago hasta las 3? El aburrimiento mas grande es la
Siesta y si pasa un avién papa se despierta, los gritos,
mama se aprovecha y se levanta" (69) .' Toto also reveals
that Mita stimulates his fantasy world, both through the
“cartoncitos“ that they make together to pass the time, and
thy the seeds of inspiration that she plants into his
imagination: 'voy a pensar en la cinta que mas me gusté
Porque mama me dijo que pensara en una cinta para que no me

aburriera " (37) .

81
Toto’s imagination sprouts by using movie fantasy to

link the fictional and historical plane, mixing Mita and 'la
Ginger' in savior-type roles, while posing Berto and the bad
gypsy as threatening figures. Toto transcends reality by
floating above the clouds with Ginger, creating his own
laappy ending while overcoming adversity in both the
arealistic and fictional worlds. The problematics of the
cnonstantly shifting monologue emphasizes the evasiveness of
tflne parameters between fictional reality and fiction within
friction. Their gaps cannot be distinguished, nor can Toto
face them.

As Toto matures, so do his fantasies. Yet, it would
Seeem that he would accept or even acknowledge the gulf
between reality and fiction. On the contrary, the gap
between the two is made evident, along with Toto’s
dependence on escape into his own fictional world. The
Subject matter does not change. As in chapter three, both
Cflnapters five and thirteen deal with romance, revenge, and
Salvation with Toto playing definitive roles. In chapter
tflaree, he transcends reality and is saved in the fictional
“norld along with Ginger Rogers. In chapter five, Toto
iJacorporates two conflictive situations from his real world
iJlto his fictive one.

Toto bases his fantasies on models that he draws during
tLI1e siesta hour which stem.from the movies. He is so
dependent on them that he cannot identify with the real and

fictive world without his portrayals. The act of creation

82

is hindered by the artistic influence of the products of
popular culture. Toto must have a model from.which to draw:
“Sin modelo no sé dibujar' (68). What he sketches reflects
his dream.world and vice-versa: movie scenes that take him
to another world, neatly incorporating people and events
from.his everyday existence. Chapter five demonstrates
Toto’s complete dependence on the cinema. His drawings
become more like real life as they reflect Toto’s fantasy
world. From his real world Toto takes Alicita, the girl for
whom he holds his affection along with her ideal uncle and
incoporates them into a fantasy which originates from his
drawings. Toto draws a life-like picture of Alicita’s uncle
that resembles his likeness. His drawings represent real
life, which means for Toto, one that imitates the movies.
Once he has established the scene, Toto jumps into the
fantasy. He becomes so involved in his ”other existence“
that he verbally slips:

Y e1 tio un dia la besa en la boca y le dice que la

quiere y yo desde la cocina del hotel le tiro una

moneda al del organito que pasa por la calle para que

toque una pieza y Luisa Rainer se levanta poco a poco y

se da cuenta que se esté curando y salen a bailar. (77)
At this point Toto plays character in the text, narrator of
the text, and editor and character in fantasy. Thus, he has
not only authored two texts but has symbolically linked
them through the movies as well, truly affirming himself as
a cinematic motif.

Other fantasies and situations seep into Toto’s text.

After his visions of having Alicita’s uncle as a surrogate

83
father, he escapes from the thought that his true father
"hace traiciones' like Rita Hayworth, by delving into the
cabin/Gran Ziegfield fantasy, which includes his male idol
from.the realistic realm, Raul Garcia. Toto imagines himself
as the helpless weak female type, hoping to be rescued, not
from the dream world, rather from evil forces. Ironically,
his fantasy switches later, placing Raul in the role of the
avenged instead of a savior.

Toto cannot cope with the secret witnessing of
Paquita’s deflowering by Raul in the seat of a truck.

Toto’s fantasy both effectively deals with the problem and
narrates it to the reader. Paquita and Raul will meet their
demise because they are sinners, or perhaps to be more
exact, because Toto had no choice in observing their sinful
act.

The act of witnessing takes hold of Toto again in the
chapter as he sees Alicita with another boy, Luis Castro, at
her birthday party. After Luis kicks Toto, the latter
chooses not to look his attacker in the eye, but to flee
like Errol Flynn on an imaginary bell tower rope, unable to
contend with his marginal presence at the party. He
conveniently rids himself of Luis Castro by having him

become eaten by a ficticious crocodile that appeared
earlier in the chapter. Once he has fled the scene, Toto
has no recourse but to confront reality. However, he finds
that he is unable to face his father within the repressive

confines of his home. Toto fears that his father might

84
think he is a coward if he were to see his face red from
crying.22
Thus he hides behind the door and flees into his dream
world, leading the reader back to the birthday fantasy of
the chapter. He imagines the demise of his rival, Luis
Castro, and his accomplishment of winning Alicita through
deception, closing the chapter with the final desire of
transsending into the body of Alicita’s uncle:

después va a correr a darle un beso al tio con la boca

de perfume de haber besado tantos besos a1 tio, y yo en

mis adentros me voy a reir, pero despacito, porque

Alicita, ella que se cree tan viva, no se va a dar

cuenta que me esta besando a mi. (96)

The level of deceit reaches beyond Alicita. Toto, of
course, has tricked himself into believing that he may
benefit from both worlds. The reader, on the other hand,
must sort out the shifting fictional planes.

Although a number of years have transpired between
Toto’s monologue of 1942 and his composition, "La pelicula
que mas me gusto“ of chapter thirteen, he does not seem to
have matured greatly.23 He is still unable to communicate
with his schoolmates and longs to be with his mother in
Coronel Vallejos. Toto’s language does reflect that of
teen-age years, and his level of intelligence is notable.
Toto reads a book a day while at boarding school in Buenos
Aires, not necessarily out of interest, rather as a way to
make time (reality) fly by faster. The gulf between the

fantasy world and the real world has become more blurred.

Toto has made an important distinction in his first two

 

85

monologues that changes in his written composition. Actual
movie stars appear in his fantasies from chapters three and
five. These stars are drawn from his extra—literary world;
Shirley Temple, Ginger Rogers, Rita Hayworth, and Errol
Flynn, among others, seem to link Toto and the reader with
the fictional plane. However, the image may be deceptive.

Once again, the fictional plane is constantly shifting.
It is ironic that Toto is bound to a fictional plane through
extra-literary resources, those who are known for their
fictional protrayals. Toto not only imitates but also
becomes part of the fictional world that he is narrating.

The characters from both the literary and non-literary
world are also caught up in his shifting perceptions of
fantasy and reality. Toto presents the movie stars from a
distorted plane: one of his real life. He does not refer to
the characters’ names that the Hollywood stars assume in
their movies, rather they are presented as if they appear
outside their own cinematic “texts.“ Toto processes his
fantasies by sieving them through a distorted reality, one
in which Toto can play a role without losing touch with his
real world. Furthermore, Toto verifies that it is the‘pypp
that the stars create to which he is attached, not the
movies themselves.

In chapter thirteen Toto breaks the pattern by
reiterating the movie, El gran vals, without including the
names of the movie stars. Toto writes his composition as if

it were an actual movie instead of an account of one, with

86
himself as one of the characters. Toto does not refer to
Luisa Rainer by name, who was the star of his previous
fantasy and the movie, El gran vals. Rather, Toto tells the
story without referring to her or the movie title.

The reader is immediately placed inside the movie
script and the action; he is introduced to the characters
without knowing which Hollywood actors are representing
them. Instead, Toto relates the romantic tale between
Johann Strauss, a composer down on his luck, and Carla
Donner, the singer who saves him from his misery. Unlike
his other fantasies, reality bursts the bubble of a possible
happy ending. Carla is chained to an army officer,

Hagenbruhl, who happens to be Johann’s political idol.
After he punches drunken Johann in the caberet where Carla
is performing, Carla saves Johann and they ride away in a
carriage into a dreamrlike utopia. At this point Toto
transcends into Johann’s body, able to read his thoughts:
'Se me ocurre que hay algo que me escapa a1 entendimiento,
algfin secreto...“ (252). Toto can also narrate Carla’s
dream which becomes text by passing through several planes:
dream in the movies in Toto’s conscience. Thus, what
appears as (con)text is the result of the infusion of other
smaller, edited texts that stem from.the movies as well as
other characters.

However, by the infusion of reality, Carla is
confronted by Johann’s wife, Poldi, and is forced to accept

Carla and Johann’s idealistic existence. Toto must bow out

87
of the movie, one that he imagines in shadeless white: 'El
milagro de amor termino, Johann ha vuelto a ser Johann'
(260). Toto, like his characters in the movies, fades into
the sunset, formally retiring from the text. His presence
is imbued into the remaining chapters through the eyes of
the other characters who contribute judgemental details
about him that offer the reader tainted information.
Ironically, by the end of the novel Toto’s character is far
fram complete. Beside his small, effeminate stature, high
intelligence, and his penchant for escape into fantasy,
little else is known about Toto, that is, nothing
substantial for a novel’s protagonist. He and the other
characters are also left in textual limbo, shoved into the
margins of their creations. Jonathan Tittler emphasizes the
lack of textual goals or progression:

No one dies; no one triumphs. At the chronological end

of the novel, in fact, nothing of consequence is

resolved. No indication is given as to what the future

of the characters will be like. (98)

Hence, Toto is left in the margins of the text and his mind,
entrapped by his creations and the created text that the
other characters have contributed to him. Perhaps the
greatest enlightenment about Toto’s character development
stems from.his parents, Berto and Mita.

Berto plays the roles of the alienated and the
alienator from a thematic standpoint as well as from a
formal structure. His presence influences and drives a
wedge between his family (two focal characters) -- Mita and

Toto. Both are imprisoned by Berto’s oppressive and

88

threatening behavior that keeps them alienated fram the rest
of the characters. Mita is abandoned in a barren town and
isolated from her reality in Buenos Aires, without family,
friends or the opportunity to pursue her career potential.

Toto is held to Berto’s images of male identity, even
if it costs enrolling him into the Baby Soccer league.
Berto also deems it necessary to send Toto away to Buenos
Aires to school so that he will fit the "proper image.“
Berto has alienated and at the same time entrapped his
family. He has pushed them aside and away from Mita’s
family, isolating them in a sterile environment in which
they cannot flourish. Thus, both Mita and Toto find
consolation in attending movies and fantasizing about them
afterward, an activity to which Berto cannot relate. There
is a glimmer of hope when he views Rita Hayworth in Sangre y

Arena with Mita and Toto, but that quickly fades as soon as

 

he meets his fellow workers in the café near the theater
afterward. Once he leaves with them to listen to the soccer
match, Berto delineates his inclinations to dwell in reality
rather than to “lose himself" by escaping from his grim
existence. While alienating his family and their
activities, Berto also alienates himself (along with his
family) from.the rest of Coronel Vallejos. As discussed
earlier in the chapter, Berto balks at the opportunity to
reveal his inner self and to justify his actions that take
place in the novel. Instead, he wields his "machista'

behavior to attempt to keep his world in his domain, which

89
drives everyone away. His failure to communicate entraps
him in the periphery of the text, and he takes with him Mita
and Toto.
By identifying with Rita Hayworth, Berto confirms his
alienation from his family, especially for Toto. He had
hoped that his father would be able to bury himself in

Toto’s world and understand his illusions and idol worship.

Instead, Berto relates to the star that deceives,
shattering Toto’s imaginary escape world:

Rita Hayworth es bella pero cruel, su imagen fisica no

corresponde a su imagen moral, lo que quiere decir que

el universo filmico pierde su equilibrio, su

perfeccién, su previsibilidad. El mundo imaginario

traiciona a la ilusién del espectador. La lectura

confiada de Toto parece experimenter un choque
profundo.“
Although Toto does not lose his illusions, he does forfeit
the acceptance of his father.

Berto serves as an alienator of the text as well in an
attempt to control it. He permeates the novel, either by
direct reference or by influence. No chapter is dominated
by him, although the final chapter suggests such a theory.
Chapter sixteen 15 created by Berto, however it is destroyed
before it is truly "read," once again affirming his
inability to communicate and control. The resolution of the
novel is left in his hands, which he effaces. Berto has
unknowingly relinquished the text to the reader, one that he

has both opened up and closed off simultaneously. Mita is

perhaps the greatest inspiration for Toto, yet she is

90
probably the most elusive character of the novel. Her
development is built on absence and repression. Mita is
always elsewhere, yet she seems to frame the text and link
other characters. Mita, or more specifically her isolation,
dominates chapter one and recurs in the dialogue with Choli
in chapter four. The reader is offered many clues of her
alienation through her relationship with Berto as well, who
keeps her isolated from her loved ones. Mita concludes the
first half of the novel through her monologue that, like the
other chapters, entraps her in the margins of the text and
exposes her mundane world and self-deception.

Mita seems to live in a memory, one based on remorse
for her baby’s sudden death. She refers to the account in
her monologue as if it had happened yesterday, as if time
had not transpired. In the same breath, Mita refers to
pregnancy, confusing the past with the present. It is
covertly revealed that she is pregnant again. Mita’s text
does not only jumble time, but, like Toto, mixes fantasy and
reality as well, deceiving both herself and the reader. The
subject of I'baby" links past with her present condition,
instilling fear which leads her into tying her demise to
cinematic escape. Her deceased baby was perfect, like one
that 'alquimistas locos“ (139) were trying to create. Yet,
she punishes Toto for emulating her way of dealing with
reality. Mita has created a vicious circle; she provides a
fantasy model to imitate, encouraging Toto’s dependence on

the movies by drawing picture cards of them. Then she takes

91

the models she helps to create and throws them down the
sewer. Through her thoughts and actions, Mita represses or
destroys the texts (mental or drawn images) that she has
contributed.
Every avenue of escape leads to deception, be it the movies
or the Church. Both have entrapped her: I'lo mas triste es
que los nenes no bautizados no van al cielo, van a1
limbo..." (149). God has deceived her. Mita is able to
change the ending of the movie Romeo and Juliet in order to
fit her needs. She sees it fitting that God do the same:
”5y por qué Dios no cambia de idea y hace salir todo bien?
(153). In other words, Mita who is aware of her own
existence as an author, wants to assure that the editor of
the “Grand Text“ exercise the same subjective control. She
does face the truth, however, realizing that she cannot
exercise textual control over reality and that escape is
really impossible, even in death: "ese panteon es una celda'
(148). Mita, like her baby, will exist forever in the
periphery, alienated from.the existence which she desired.

Ironically, the majority of the characters are
spiritually or emotionally linked to Mita and they admire
her in some way. They have not enjoyed the privilege of
knowing Mita’s innermost thoughts which have been offered to
the reader. Thus, these characters do not have the
advantage of knowing her inner self or becoming deceived by
it. Instead, they see her as a glimmer of hope amidst a

dull existence. Those closest to her are, of course, the

92
most deceived.

Héctor and Teté (Mita’s niece and nephew who stay with
the Casals family), Delia (a forlorn maid who seeks advice
from Mita at the pharmacy), and Paquita (Toto’s friend),
all see Mita as a type of savior with whom to identify or as
someone who has the solutions to their problems. Mita’s
stifled presence contributes to their distorted view of her
and to their own self-deception as well, serving as a
reflection of deluded expecations of life. Héctor perhaps
best mirrors Mita’s false image. He sees her as a maternal
figure, yet his relationship with her is obtuse. Héctor is
introduced to the reader in the same fashion as Mita--as a
vague topic of conversation. Toto’s recollection of a
schoolmate’s question in chapter three covertly reveals
Héctor’s presence in the Casals household: "El chico de
enfrente ’ael Hector es tu hermano?’“ (37).

Yet, Toto does not answer the question until two pages
later, while buried amongst his fantasies:

El Héctor no es mi hermano, mama dice que el Héctor es

primo pero la madre esta enferma y el Héctor vive en

casa pero no juega conmigo y los cartoncitos. (39)
Héctor’s character development depends on hazy commentary
from those around him, and much of the necessary information
to understand Héctor is withheld. For example, as David
Southard points out, “the exact difference in age appears
only in chapter twelve, where a diary comments that Héctor
’tiene diecinueve afios’ and that Toto ’tiene catorce anos’”.

The reader must accumulate data from here and there, roaming

93
through the text until the last chapter, where Berto’s
letter reveals the reason for Héctor’s presence.

Other characters who appear without warning, yet bear
weight in the process of entrapment and alienation. They
also provide insight to Héctor’s behavior. In chapter
seven, Delia reveals Héctor’s active sexuality that
supposedly lures the young girls to him. It is not until
his monologue in chapter nine that the reader is aware of
his relationship to the characters and the text. His
attempts at sexual escapades and gruff language do not mask
his alienation and loneliness nor does it compensate for the
absence of his parents. Héctor cannot accept his presence
amongst the Casals family, especially with Mita, because he
is unsure of his relationsip with her: “Mita no es como una
tia, es mas que una tia y no me quiere cagar, gella me
quiere mas que una tia?I (162).

On the other hand, Héctor feels that Mita does act on
his behalf, promising to write to his father for permission
to remain with the Casals family and go to school to be a
mechanic. Yet, as in the case of Berto’s letter to Jaime,
Héctor’s father, Mita never sends her letter to him either.
Instead, she sends Héctor to boarding school in Buenos
Aires, just like Toto, exercising control over him, Mita
seems to depend on Héctor as well, doling her displaced
maternal instincts on him after her baby’s death. Héctor not
only fills the void of her infant, but also provides for a

"macho'I role model. Héctor, who is masculine, strong and

94
extroverted contrasts with Toto’s small, introverted and
effeminate presence. However, a strong relationship is
never established between Héctor and Mita, nor with anyone
else. Instead, Héctor fades into fantasy, pretending to
broadcast his own stardom as a soccer player:

...de centroja le paso la pelota al win, el win en

violenta jugada a1 otro win que se la pasa al centroja

y igol! ;gol, sefiores! igol de centrojé...) (162)
Héctor’s development through his monologue and reactions
from others in the text reflect the demise of the remaining
characters: self-deception and entrapment.

Another cousin who stays with the Casals family also
falls into the same trap. Teté suddenly appears without
explanation. The textual cues that are given lead the
reader to assume that she and Héctor might be brother and
sister. Both are Toto’s cousins and each has a gravely ill
mother. It is not revealed until after the accumulation of
several clues that clarifies that Teté and Héctor have
different mothers. Teté’s presence is questionable. She
disappears in the margins of the text and from.cther
people’s lives almost as quickly as she arrives. Unlike
Héctor, she lacks a bond with the family or reader. The
focus of her monologue seems to reach outward, explaining
the details of other characters, especially Mita. Teté uses
Mita as a justification to cling to religion, blaming Mita
for Jesus’s suffering because she does not attend mass.
Tete’s absorption in the Church attempts to mask her

obsession with the fear of suffocating to death like her

95

tubercular aunt. For Teté, her escape is blaming herself for
everyone’s suffering because of her sins. Thus, the logical
source for deception is religion. 1

Mita represents both temptation and redemption in
Teté’s eyes. Attempting to evoke a sense of spirituality,
Teté turns to Mita and asks her for an orange, which she had
resolved not to give her in order to resist temptation. In
an quasi-erotic description, Mita is both the source of her
pleasurable sin as well as her savior:

si, una naranja, Mita, 5i, quiero una naranja de la

planta, que Mita vaya y me arranque la naranja de la

planta, si, 51..., ésta me gusta, la chupo, hacele un

agujerito y la chupo, la chupo.... (103)

...Mita es buena, fue a arrancar una naranja de la
planta para que no me ahogue.... (115)

Teté seems to inspire sympathy from the reader until she
covertly reveals that she is not in need of it. Instead,
she is left to wallow in self-delusion.

Paquita, Toto’s friend who is seduced by Raul, also
turns to self-deception through a different source: the
literary world. In her case, she uses the church as a
cover. Paquita’s interior monologue transpires as she waits
in line for confession, convinced through readings of the
Bible that she must have sins to confess. Paquita’s stream
of consciousness reveals her secret temptation of a sin that
she would like to commit--to act out an erotic
interpretation of Jorge Isaac’s novel, Mppig, in her
teacher’s hotel room. She apparently went to his room.with

the book and forgot to take it back home. For Paquita the

96
literary world represented by Mppia not only conjures up
fantastic images, but also becomes the object of desire:
cada pagina le leo y la toco, 51 e1 instructor me dice
que la leyo, toco cada pagina, cada pagina la rozo
apenas con las yemas de los cinco dedos...me devuelve
el libro hecho un espejo: el instructor se leyé cada
palabra de Mppip_y ninguna me voy a dejar de releer yo.
(185)
Sharon Magnarelli shows that: “the book becomes a mirror
image of the beloved, and the desire for the beloved is
substitued by desire for the reflection, the book, the
beloved converted into discourse and frozen."25 Thus, the
object of interpretation focuses on Mppia.

Isaac’s novel obviously represents a point of departure
from.the extra-literary world for the reader. Thus,
Paquita’s rewriting of her literary world must at some point
conflict or distort the interpretation of the discourses as
it appears in her stream of consciousness. Paquita’s
chapter well demonstrates the opportunity to uncover the
palimpsestic potential where the overt and covert literary
cues are twisted to meet the author’s needs (in this case,
Paquita’s) in order to cope with reality.

Furthermore, Paquita uses Mppia as a way to link
herself with Mita, who also uses the same romantic novel to
escape from reality. In Paquita’s eyes, Mita is worthy of
listening to the confessions of her sins of the flesh--both
those with her teacher (which stem from her conscious) and
those committed with Raul. Paquita’s link with Mita serves

as a textual anchor, placing Paquita’s chapter as part of a

related whole. She is the only minor character that is

97
somewhat developed before appearing in her own chapter. Four
other minor characters appear without any introduction that
seem to subvert the text. Cobito, Delia, Esther and
Herminia all provide chapters late in the novel (chapters
eleven, twelve, fourteen, and fifteen respectively), either
through monologue or through written text that break away
from the rest of the novel. Although Cobito and Esther
attend school with Toto, their contributions to the novel do
not overtly provide details about him. Instead, both
characters focus inward.

Esther’s diary is ridden with guilt for hoping to
maintain the scholarship that the Peronist government has so
graciously bestown on her.26 She jumps in and out of her
text, shifting from the “yo" form to addressing herself in
the second and third person. She even includes an implied
reader, imploring him to follow her commands, such as
'Empecemos' (234). Esther maintains a distance from.her
addressees by threatening anyone who might expose her inner
feelings: ‘Guay de que te lean" (237). She seems to
contribute little to the text. Her diary underscores the
alienation and entrapment that both the textual boundaries
and the process of reading impose.

Cobito, another schoolmate of Toto, provides a text
that seems to reveal little to the reader. His monologue
displays resentment toward Toto for his failure in school as
well as for being poor and fatherless. He also covertly

intimates that Toto is to blame for his situation. Cobito

98
proves to be lazy and unwilling to assert himself. His
escape into gangster fantasy solves his problems by shooting
the traitors like Toto who are able to go home from school
to their families on the weekends.

Ironically, Cobito is the prime suspect as the author
of "la carta anonima' that appears in chapter fourteen. He
does not have the initiative to pass his classes to avoid
spending an extra month in school, yet he is driven enough
to direct a letter to the dean to attempt to tattle on Toto.

In reality, his letter follows the pattern of the
other chapters, focusing on another character to covertly
expose the textual and contextual underpinnings of the
character narrating the text. Cobito reveals his identity
through his mobster-like language and the tone of resentment
so identifiable in his previous interior monologue.

Delia, a lovesick maid, provides an interior monologue
that prepares the reader for Mita’s chapter. She appears
without any previous introduction or mention in the text.
Although her role may seem questionable, Delia contributes
prejudicial information in the development of Mita’s
character. She is in love with Lopez (who married someone
else from his home town), but is engaged to Yamil, a sloppy
Turk. Mita gives her advice, encouraging Deila to wed him
because he is a nice man. In other words, Mita tries to
convince Delia to accept her mundane reality and live
entrapped in a relationship that is anything but ideal--just

like Mita. Delia, like Paquita, tries to model herself

99
after Mita, yet she deserves little sympathy. She is
content to exist as she does, and if not, she escapes to
'dormir a pata ancha hasta el otro dia" (135).

The final minor character that appears, Herminia, seems
to be the most disparate. She is never mentioned in the the
novel, yet she writes her own chapter that is placed
penultimately in the text. Herminia herself vehemently
denies any connection with the rest of the world,
emphasizing its influence of pop culture: “No puedo juzgar,
no puedo hablar de algo que no conozco“ (279). She instead
fantasizes through the avenue with which she is most
familiar: classical music. She wishes to die like the
wylisses, virgins who commit suicide after they dance until
they are out of breath, which very much parallels Herminia’s
existence. Henminia revitalizes the dichotomy of presence
and absence in her I'cuaderno de pensamientos," pining away
about the life she cannot achieve, stifled by her asthma.
Her potential to be a concert pianist was snuffed out by,
like Mita, being forced to move to Coronel Vallejos from
Buenos Aires. Herminia exists alone in her apartment
fantasizing not about the life she might have, but of dying,
perhaps like Chopin spitting up blood on the piano keys.

She cannot think about life as others experience it, thus
she must deprive herself of life’s lust. Instead of reading
novels about life, she turns to the black and white
objective pages of the dictionary. Herminia is no different

from.any other character, just perhaps more fatalistic. She

100
professes not to fall into the trap of escape, yet she
realizes that her life has meant even less than the mediocre
existence of the others, comparing it to a text: “Mi vida es
una pagina en blanco" (291). This penultimate chapter leads
to Berto’s letter to Jaime. She suggests an attitude of
hopelessness and non-existence that sets the tone for the
final chapter. Thus, La traicion de Rita Hayyorth ends like
Herminia’s life, with an effaced text, "una pagina en
blanco."
In summary, as one reads through La traicion de Rita

Hayworth, the deceptive nature of the text is exposed.
Several readings become possible through the dichotomy of
presence and absence in its formal structure, narrative and
authorial voice, and characters. La traicion is built upon a
shifting base that spirals, leading back not to a beginning,
but to paths that lead to more irresolvable questions. The
novel’s fonm also projects the potential of deceit,
requiring that the reader play an active role in creating
and deciphering the text and exposing its underlying
discourses. La traicion de Rita Hayyorth offers a myriad
of textual footprints that seem to take several paths that
turn, twist, fork, and intersect. The formal structure
deceives the reader by its symmetry of two sets of eight
chapters. On the surface, the text’s foundation seems to be
neatly ordered, chronologically based from 1933 to 1949.
However, the penultimate chapter reveals its underpinnings

by taking the reader back to 1933 through the presentation

101
of information in Berto’s letter to his brother that offers
other alternatives to the interpretation of the text.
Moreover, instead of suggesting a linear structure, chapter
fifteen sends the text in a chaotic spiral. The relationship
between chapters seemed to be inter- and intra—textually
linked as well. Characters are bound together within and
between chapters through a common bond--a life doomed to
mediocrity. Their constant wandering in and out of dialogue
and subject matter equates their evasiveness with the sense
of alienation of their existence in society as well as in
the pages. The characters’ absence or repression lends as
much bearing on the readings as does their presence. The
characters’ contribution to the text does not edify their
own development, rather their existence underscores their
alienation within the pages. Their greatest offerings are
details of other characters, especially in Toto’s case.
Chapter one establishes the pattern of absence through the
periphery of the dialogue. The focus, if one exists, seems
to stay on the Casals family who no longer lives in Coronel
vallejos. More importantly, the characters who participate
in the textual “cacophony“ are unable to follow one
particular thread of dialogue. Each one is entrapped in
his/her own “text,“ alienated from the rest of the
interlocutors. Rather, each attempts to construct
his/her own world, and in doing so, discovers that he/she
has built a labyrinth of inescapable fantasy. Another

ramification of the dichtomy of presence and absence shows

102

through the progression of the chapters and narrative voice.
Chapter one begins with dialogue, suggesting direct
communication. However, through the progression of the
text, the form of narration shifts to the destruction of
communication. Dialogue shifts to interior or truncated
monologue, diaries and epistolary that is destroyed before
reaching its intended receiver, closing off any type of
direct communication. One method of communication as well as
narration is reflected through the use of popular culture.
The characters’ inability to relate to each other is
reflected through escape inward. Thus they turn to the
glamorous fantasy world of mass culture. The parameters
between the literary world and the extra-literary world are
potentially effaced through its deceptive role for both the
reader and characters——those within the text as well as
those within pop culture, especially for Toto. The cinema
creates discourses between character, fantasy, reality, and
reader. The movies of the 19305 and 19405 reflect absolute
truths and a perception of reality through the absorption of
values, ideologies and myths created by the larger-than-life
stars. Grade B movies, radio broadcasts and romantic novels
transcend the medium and act as narrative voices for the
textual characters. They also transcend the medium and
incorporate themselves into their fantastic creations.

Through the process of creation, the characters’ role
is expanded to narrator, actor, and subject. The reader also

must transcend the boundaries of his/her extra-literary

103
point of departure. The role of popular culture deceptively
suggests a parallel relationship between character, text and
reader where the latter must actively participate to decode
the text. However, because he/she plays a part in the act
of creation, the interference offered by popular culture can
entrap the reader. The characters’ function within Lp_
traicion de Rita Hayyorth is also somewhat questionable.
They play dubious roles, sharing the tasks of author,
narrator, and actor. Their meaning within the text is vague,
and their absence seems to speak more loudly than their
presence. Their existence is marginalized and resurrected
by becoming topics of other discourse. Toto seems to be the
central focus of the text. Yet, for a protagonist he seems
rather underdeveloped which distances him from other
characters as well as from the reader. He is a mere
emulation of his mother who inspires him to equate his
existence with the fantasy world he creates through the
movies. His parents, Berto and Mita are no better off. They
are created through textual repression and effacement that
they perfonm. Their roles are questionable, and like the
remaining characters, define the direction and tone of the
text. It seems that their roles are meaningless, continually
wandering in and out of chapters, except for Herminina who
suddenly appears through her diary in chapter fifteen. They
support the continuous shifting of the text, and underline
the lack of a central focus.

It is the reader who is left with the responsibility of

104
resolving the textual problematics posed by the alienating
structure, form and characters that flow through the other
novels in this study. Authorial voice seems to continually
shift, appearing in one moment, only to be elusive in the
next. The potential of several readings exist that seem to
lay in the hands of the reader but one must carefully read

in order not to become ensnared in textual entrapment.

NOTES

1. 'La traicion de Rita Hayyorth: Una tarea de
desmitificacion', Narradores de esta América, (Buenos Aires:

Editorial Alfa Argentina, 1974); 365.

2. For a detailed study of the role of pop culture in
Puig’s novels, see Introduction, 48-52.

3. Pamela Bacarisse, The Necessagy Dream: A Study of the
Novels of Manuel Puig (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble Books,

1988); 8. “a vie est ailleurs' (’Life is somewhere

else’) is the title of Bacarisse’s chapter that analyzes pa
traicion de Rita Hayyorth where she focuses on the human
condition and life’s incompleteness.

4. Rodriguez Monegal contends that the text does not
merely convey a collective voice, rather “no se trata en ella
simplemente de enfilar de cualquier manera capitulos sobre
una mediocridad colectiva, sino en hacer jugar los distintos
niveles de esa mediocridad a través de un contrapunto de
voces que, al mismo tiempo que definen su peculiar situacion
y tono, contribuyen a ilustrar el concierto general“ (361).

5. The chapters seem to be linked “inter-textually" by
characters who continually enter and exit the text, either
physically or by mere mention. “Extra-textual“ sources, such
as Hollywood cinema and radio broadcasts connect both
characters and text as well, providing a false sense of
cohesiveness to the novel.

6. See Jonathan Tittler, "Betrayed by Rita Hayyorth: An
Androgenous Text," Narrative Irony in the Contepporagy
Spanish American Novel (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UP, 1984),
79-100. Tittler points out that although Toto seems to
approximate the role of protagonist, he "cannot be deemed the
novel’s principal character. The text is so imbued with his
presence that he is associated instead with the sum of its
parts: the novel itself“ (85). He suggests that, rather,
Small-town Argentine life is the main character of pa

traicion de Rita Hayyorth.

7. For a specific analysis of the use of the “folletin“

in La traicion ge Rita Hayyorth, see Hugo Dogopol, “Puig: Los
limites del folletin," Boletin Cultural y Bibliogréfico 18.2

(1981), 67-74; and Begona Ibéfiez Avedano, "La mimesis como
parametro en la narrativa de Manuel Puig,“ Letras de Deusto

105

106
16.36 (1986): 91-105.
8. 'Aproximaciones a Manuel Puig,“ Plural 57 (1976): 25.

9. Soledad Bianchi, “La traicion de Rita Hayyorth, una
novela dialchica,’I Revista Iberoamericana 53.141 (1987): 850.

10. Bianchi suggests that the dialogue attempts to:
'unir, anudar, establecer relaciones, afiadir, atar cabos,
elaborando un bordado [un tejido] un texto con dedicada y
concentrada atencion' (857). She uses this homology from
Roland Barthes, Le plaisir du texte (Paris: Seuil, 1975).

11. There is speculation whether Chapter One is a
complete dialogue. See Marta Morello-Frosch, I'The New Art of
Narrating Films," Review (1972): 55. She contends that
Chapter One is a dialogue that serves as the basis of
communication. There is a conflictive proposition in Lillian
Manzor-Coats, 'Un affair de traicién: el lector en dos
novelas de Puig,“ Revista de Critica Literaria
Latinoamericana 14.27 (1988): 114, since she sees that 'el
texto no va de comunicacion a la ausencia de ésta sino que
verbaliza desde el comienzo la alienacion de los personajes a
través de un lenguaje oral que no les sirve de nada.“

12. Manuel Puig admits the influence of his occupation
as script-writer for films before becoming an author. See
Ronald Christ, IAn Interview With Manuel Puig,“ Review 44
(1977): 52-61; and Jorgelina Fidia Corbatta, 'Encuentros con
Manuel Puig," Revista Iberoamericana 49 (1983): 591—620.

13. Suspended Fictions: Reading Novels by Manuel Puig
(Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1987) 27.

14. Lucille Kerr analyzes the relationship between the
betrayal of Rita Hayworth and Berto’s involvement with the
text. Her chapter suggests that the “key” to La praicion ge
Rita Hayyorth is Berto’s role as betrayer on several textual
levels, contending that Berto most closely relates to the
title of the novel.

15. Soledad Bianchi, 'La traicion de Rita Hayyorth:
una novela dialogica'. Bianchi asserts that the reader must

act as an intruder to the characters’ minds: "ante la
ausencia de un narrador que ortorgue una vision definitiva-—
Se ve obligado a creerle a los personajes y porque, a1 mismo
tiempo, debe intentar traspasar las exterioridades para
Conocerlos, pero antes tiene que observarlas y enterarse de
halagos y de disputas. De este modo, aunque no lo quiera, se
transformara en un espia mas porque asi se lo exige una buena
lectura'I (850).

16. David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film,
CMadison: U of Wisconsin P, 1985) 158.

107

17. Bordwell contends that "the spectator comes to a
film with schemata, and these are derived in part from
experience with extrinsic norms. The viewer applies these
schemata to the film, matching the expectations appropriate
to the norms within tacit conventional frameworks that are
social and historical" (151-152). 0 el arte nuevo de narrar

18. Maria Salgado, "En torno a Manuel Puig y sus
metamorfosis del narrador," Hispanic Journal 7.1 (1985); 81.

19. Hugo Dogopol, “Puig: Los limites del folletin,“
Boletin Cultural y Bibliogréfico 18.2 (1981): 69.

20. Bacarisse states that “if we think about the gulf
between reality and Toto’s dreams, we should better
understand the circumstances and the psychology of the adult
characters who are not all that different from him. And if we
look at how he adapts to his personal reality, we see that
the adults’ "therapy“ varies little in kind. They may choose
different models, and they are likely to have more experience
and to be more practised and subtle in the game they are
playing, but that is all" (15).

21. Alicia Borinsky, 'Castracion y Lujos: La Escritura
de Manuel Puig,“ Revista Iberoamericana 41 (1975): 35. She
posits the reader only knows Toto through his language, and
'su individualidad consiste en su generalidad. Su lenguaje
es el de los otros y lo finico que conocemos y existe de él
para nosotros es su lenguaje."

22. Ironically, Berto is unable to face Toto and reality
as well when he confronts his father with the fact that Toto
had noticed that his were red: 'Y él tampoco paso a mirar los
arboles de pera recién cortados, dio toda la vuelta por el
negocio para no ver, y le pregunté si habia llorado que tenia
los ojos rojos y dijo que los hombres no lloran' (81).

23. Chapter thirteen is the only chapter without a date
provided. However, the preceding and following chapters are
both from.1947, leading the reader to assume that chapter
thirteen must also be from.the same year. Yet, because the
final chapter is out of proper chronology, the date for
chapter thirteen may also be uncertain.

24. René Campos, 'Las ’peliculas de mujeres’ y'pa

traicion de Rita Hayyorth', Literature and Popular Culture in
the Hispanic World, A SymposiumCW, Rose S. Minc, ed.

(Mbntclair, NJ: Montclair State College, 1982); 65.

25. “Woman as Dramatized Reader: Maria and La traicién
W”. W 32-1 (1988): 85.

108

26. For an analysis of Manuel Puig’s criticism of
Peron’s rule within La traicion de Rita Hayyorth, see Pamela
Bacarisse, "The Projection of Peronism in the Novels of
Manuel Puig', The Historical Novel in Latin America, Daniel
Balderston, ed. (Gaithersburg MD: Hispamérica 1986), 185-199.

BOQUITAS PINTADAS:
THE STRONGHOLD OF MEMORY

Only a year after the publication of Manuel Puig’s
first novel, La traicion de Rita Hayworth (1968), appeared
another of Puig’s novels about the small town of Coronel
Vallejos, entitled Boguitas pintadas (1969), that confirmed
the preoccupations and struggles of living in the author’s
native country during the decades of the 19305 and 19405.
In many ways, Bogpitas pintadas seems to share common
characteristics with La traicion de Rita HayyorthuliBoth
novels share a similar time frame and geographical setting,
although the period of Bogpitas pintadas extends two decades
beyond that of La traicion de Rita Hayyorthu2 .Also they
are structurally organized into two divisions of eight
chapters each. More importantly, these novels are built
upon a constantly shifting narrative foundation that not
only stems from the very lives, ideologies and myths that
betray the characters, but critiques them as well, thus
creating a self-reflexive text. Furthermore, the novels’
ideals and mores are based upon social and literary myths
and the conventions of popular culture that are drawn from
the extra-textual world, opening the possibilities of
unearthing several texts and in its process, the potential
for reader entrapment.

109

110
reflect Puig’s intellectual affiliation with the link
between literary reality and the extra-literary world. As
Puig has stated in several interviews, he composed his first
two novels from.childhood memories.3 The characters that
appear are composites of the relatives and acquaintances

that roamed Puig’s boyhood town named General Villegas

during the very same period of La traicion de Rita Hayyorth

and Bogpitas pintadas:
I wrote about those people from my childhood who had
been close to me, people about whom I had a lot of
information because they had talked to me a lot. As a
matter of fact, they had devoted time to me because
they were mostly misfits with not much else to do....I
had the whole burden of memory inside me. (Christ, 52)
From Puig’s personal experiences and the memories of these
events came the foundation for La traicion de Rita Hayyorth
and Bogpitas pintadas where he portrays oppressed and
alienated characters entrapped in a society which they more
or less have accepted. As discussed in chapter one, pp,
traicién concentrates on one particular family, the Casals;
or perhaps more accurately, on one member of that family,
Toto Casals, who serves as the thematic nexus of the novel.
He establishes the connection between the fragmented text
through his relationship to the other characters and their
narrative. Toto is the son of Berto and Mita, Héctor’s
cousin, and the butt of rebukes of his schoolmates. Yet,
throughout the work no invitation is presented to
internalize either Toto, his family, or any other textual

link. Rather, he is a composite of the myths, and

ideologies transmitted through cinematic fantasy and

111

clichés. Perhaps La traicion de Rita Hayworth could be
categorized as a social novel, one that represents a certain
group or class of Argentinian society, thus glossing over
any obvious, specific details that would pinpoint or
personalize any one character. Few details are provided for
Toto or his father, Berto, his mother, Mita, or any other
character in order to classify them beyond one-dimensional.
Their link to each other is the relationship to a particular
middle-class nuclear family, as established in the opening
dialogue. The reader is presented with a conversation
during a sewing circle at the house of Mita’s parents, a
traditional "family-type" activity. However, no identity of
character is provided in the dialogue, nor does there seem
to be any true personal relationship amongst characters,
thus opening an immediate gulf between the reader and the
characters which distances the reader from the narrative.

Bogpitas pinpadas follows a similar pattern to La
traicién de Rita Hayyorth. In many ways, Puig’s second
novel seems to continue the saga of the alienated populus
who live in Coronel Vallejos. The names of the characters
have been changed, but not their circumstances. Whereas,pg
traicion de Rita Hayyorth focuses on Toto as a fictional
nucleus, Bogpitas pintadas concentrates on a group of people
from various social classes whose relationship revolves
around a deceased character.

On a narrative plane, Bogpitgs pintadas employs similar

techniques found in La traicion de Rita Hayyorth: one-sided

112
monologues, elisions, letters, cinematographic conventions,
stream of consciousness, unnamed interlocutors, and
convoluted time frames; all which demand the active
participation of the reader in the re-writing of the text.
However, Bogpitas pintadas has gone even further with
narrative play. Legal documents, medical reports,
obituaries, memo books, contribute as well. What is so
striking though in Bogpitas pintadas are the complicated
twists absent in Puig’ first novel. Its narrative
development stems from distinct points of perspective:
separate narratives contributed by individual characters.

In Bogpitas pintadas, a variety of sources constitute
the fiction. This developmental technique is similar to
that of La traicion de Rita Hayworth, but instead of
progressing the action as it does in the latter, the
perspectives continually twist and spiral back to the same
events, thus resulting in multiple overlapping narratives.
Furthermore the role of the epistolary is extended.

The literary convention of writing letters dominates
the direction of the text as well as the two main
protagonists, Juan Carlos and Nené. In La traicion de Rita
Hayyorph one letter exposes the potential for several
readings, whereas in Bogpitas pintadas a proliferation of
correspondence builds the text bit by bit, leading the
fiction and reader in one direction and then another,
striving to reinforce and undermine it simultaneously. The

unveiled (but answered) responses also establish the bearing

113
of the novel.

The emphasis on popular culture plays a distinct role
in Bogpitas pintadas. Used as a narrative voice for the
characters as well as an escape mechanism, a variety of
popular culture products serves as a structural device. On
a deeper level, they contribute to reader deception. These
devices help to efface the constancy of time through the
convolution and inversion of old and new mass culture
conventions. The cinema, which plays a minor role in this
novel, is infused with the soap-opera, women’s magazines,
and the tango, whose popularity indicated social status.

Moreover, a literary product borrowed from the 19th
century--the 'folletin'-- acts as the deceptive foundation
of the text. Parts of the text are presented by
installments, as if they were published weekly so that the
reader would anxiously await the next episode. The eclectic
combination of different elements of mass culture not only
manipulates the novel’s chronology but narrows the focus of
the text as well. Ellen McCracken points out that although
the novel seems to concentrate on the legacy of Juan Carlos,
the true nucleus may be otherwise:

...it must be remembered that some of the rules of mass

forms he employs are those which traditionally have

been addressed to women. While Puig does show the
effects of mass culture on male figures within the
novel, he pays special attention of mass culture’s
effects on women of varying socio-economic positions.‘
The majority of mass culture forms are brought to the text

for the benefit of the female figures. The novel’s title

and epigraphs are directed at women, originating from the

114
lyrics of the romantic tango. Again, the novel’s
underpinnings comment on and critique not only the
characters and their fiction, but also these very forms that
emanate from popular culture, in particular, the tango, soap
operas, and the movies.

Lastly, Puig has complicated the modes of narration by
adding multiple narrative perspectives. As with the form of
the ”folletin,” Puig has glanced to the past by resurrecting
the eye of the omniscient narrator, who is able to provide
details that the characters cannot. However, before
studying these deceptive techniques, we must return to the
underlying motives of the characters within the text. The
characters in Puig’s Bogpitas pintadas resemble those of pp
traicién de Rita Hayyorth; they are spurious "misfits“
(Christ, 52) as well, aware of the pathetic circumstances
that life has dealt them. Bogpipas pintadas reveals the
story of six prominent characters whose lives intersect,
diverge and conjoin repeatedly. All are linked to their
circumstances in Coronel Vallejos that somehow lead to one
semi-pseudo protagonist, Juan Carlos Etchepare. One
portentous detail stands out that makes his fictional
bearing questionable. He is introduced at the very onset of
the novel by his obituary notice, a young Don Juan dragged
away by tuberculosis in the prime of his life. Thus, the
major link to the remaining characters technically does not
exist. He is “resurrected" by the other characters who

continually bring him back to life by their own narrative

115
creations. Nélida (Nené) Fernandez de Massa, a malcontented
middle-class housewife and heroine, pines, both in the past
and present, for her "true-love“ throughout the novel. She
constantly relives their relationship from 1935 to 1937,
established in her correspondence to Juan Carlos’s mother in
1947 and dwells on it until she dies in 1968, which finishes
the text. Her claim to true love is that she successfully
"saved“ herself for Juan Carlos by not falling into his trap
of sexual seduction.

On the other side stands Mabel saenz, a former
schoolmate of Nené, who is also romantically linked to Juan
Carlos, and like Nené, is entrapped in the past or at least
does not see the need to confront the reality of the
present. She, however does not resist the temptations of
Juan Carlos’s amorous advances. She is his secret lover
from 1935 to 1937 while he is courting Nené. Mabel plays an
even greater role in deception. While Juan Carlos is away
at the sanatorium receiving treatment for tuberculosis,
Mabel is sleeping with his friend and cohort, Pancho. She
withholds the details of Pancho’s murder that transpires on
her patio after he leaves her bed . Her deception doubles
back on her and she ends up as alienated as the others. One
difference seems to marginalize Mabel even further: she
hails from the upper-class, but life has not dealt her a
privileged hand; she is entrapped in the same circumstances
as the rest of the characters, and like Nené, married in

order to escape her dismal life. Three other characters tie

116
in as well. On the other end of the social ladder stands
Antonia Josefa Ramirez (Raba) and Francisco Catalino Paez
(Pancho), who attempt to escape their poverty and alienation
from.society, but ironically do not seem to inspire any more
compassion because of their low social position. Pancho,
Juan Carlos’s “sidekick,“ attempts to better his existence
by two routes. One is to imitate his idol, Juan Carlos, so
he may satisfy the romantic aspect of his life, which he
seems to achieve by secretly sleeping with Mabel (and thus
deceiving his mentor, not to mention climbing the social
ladder). Pancho also seduces Raba and abandons her on
discovering that she is carrying his child. Secondly, to
better his financial status, Pancho enrolls in the police
academy to be an officer at the new police station in
Coronel Vallejos. His hope is shortlived, cut off by his
fatal stabbing just a few months after contracting
employment. Raba, a maid who eventually works for
Mabel’s parents, seems to be the most entrapped in
circumstance, especially after she gives birth to Pancho’s
illegitimate son and is rejected by him and doomed to live
with the social classification of unwed mother. Her revenge
redeems her situation: she stabs Pancho to death with a
kitchen knife after discovering him in bed with Mabel.
Finally, Celina, Juan Carlos’s irascible sister, seems to
appear as a superficial character, one who despises Nené
because she believes that Nené caused Juan Carlos’s death by

sharing frequent rendezvouses with him at night in the cold,

117
damp air. Celina’s role is underscored as an accomplice in
deception by playing manipulative textual games with both
the characters and the reader. For example, she disguises
herself as her mother, Dofia Leonor, through correspondence
with Nené, a fact revealed only to the reader in the
penultimate chapter.

On a superficial level, the characters in Bogpitas
pintadas seem to be linked to their relationship with one
character, Juan Carlos Etchepare. It could be said that
these same people are brought together by fate and
circumstance. Their relationship is neither familial or
social, nor does Puig establish any key relationship that
immediately indicates a particular bond among them. They
come from.distinct familial situations and social classes.
Yet the characters that comprise Bogpitas pintadas seem.to
take on a second dimension that the ones in La traicion de
Rita Hayworth lack. Puig explains:

Volvi a Buenos Aires después de once afios de ausencia y

fue el reencuentro con ciertos personajes de mi

infancia en el pueblo que me inspiro esta historia

[Bogpitas pintadas]. Noté un enorme desencanto en

quienes habian vivido de acuerdo al sistema social de

su momento, sin la menor rebeldia. Habian aceptado
todo ese mundo de represion sexual, habian aceptado sus

reglas, la hipocresia del mito de la virginidad
femenina, y claro, habian aceptado la autoridad. Los

noté decepcionados en su madurez.... No era un
desencanto consciente, destilaban simplemente
frustracién, tristeza..., esta gente habia creido en la

retorica del gran amor, de la gran pasion, pero no
habian actuado de acuerdo a ella. (Sosnowski, 74)

In this novel Puig’s characters display more than the
nervous tension given to those in La traicion de Rita

Hayyorth. Instead, they carry the potential to inspire

118

emotions beyond sympathy. Emir Rodriguez Monegal points out
that he shed a "metaphorical tear“ over reading the fate of
the “heroine," Nené, and by the end of the novel she was not
a mere stereotype, but a complete human being.5 These
characters are more real and identifiable, even though
claims have been made that Bogpitas pintadas is a book about
a group, a generation (Bacarisse, 34). On one hand, the
novel does concentrate on a small nucleus seemingly linked
by one character. It also can be stated that the characters
indeed represent a particular epoch shaped by ideologies,
mores, myths, and oppression.6 On the other hand, each
character stands alone, complete with his own individual
psychology and marginalized by circumstance and social
class. These characters entrapped together, yet
marginalized, take on a soap-opera type quality, continually
muddling through life while sentimentally attempting to
relive the past. Their psyche is composed of ideals and
myths supplied by the era and society in which they exist.
Furthermore, the reader provides what Margery A. Safir
defines as 'pre-textual myths“ taken from the extra-literary
realm which forces the reader to both view the text
subjectively as well as participate in its creation.7 The
potential bias between the presentation of the myths from
the literary world and those from the reader’s position open
the way for the emergence of texts underneath.

The direction of the text lies heavily in the hands of

the reader. Puig has arranged Bogpitas pintadas in a way

119
which at one turn juxtaposes an authorial figure and the
reader, and at another turn, the two seem to challenge each
other. It is never certain just who holds the director’s
baton. The authorial figure appears as quickly as it flees.
For example, Juan Carlos leads the reader through his
imagination and his photo album that explain the verbal
snapshots with inscriptions on the back of each picture,
then suddenly the authorial voice shifts to another place
and time.

One of Bogpitas pintadas salient features is the
indeterminate relationship between the reader, the authorial
voice and the text. This novel is constructed in such a way
that their relationship constantly shifts direction.
Narrative structure and form play a decisive role in
creating such a tension. What seems to be a homogeneous
text based on the serialized novel, is what Lucille Kerr
deems as “a text potentially out of control, a text which
might threaten to regenerate itself without end.“°
THE CONVOLUTION OF TEMPORAL PLANES

It is evident through its first few chapters that the
art of deception is working strategically to manipulate the
reader, sending him in various directions simultaneously.
Like La traicién de Rita Hayyorth, the narrative structure
serves to deceive the reader through a spiral in time.
However, the order of La traicion can be determined to be
quasi-linear in comparison with this text. One of the main

divergences of Bogpitas pintadas from Puig’s first novel is

120
its convoluted narrative structure. As mentioned previously,
Bogpitas pintadas does not begin at the plot’s starting
point, nor does it follow a linear direction. Instead, the
narrative structure follows an inverted pattern. The text
commences in the middle of the story in 1947, traces
backward, then forward, once again backward, and then jumps
to 1968. The majority of the text takes place between 1936
and 1938 (chapters 3-12; chapters 13 and 14 are not dated
but are presumed to be from the following decade), yet the
later dates define the point of perspective in narrative,
discursive and thematic strategies. Both beginning and end
of the novel are marked by the deaths of the two main
characters, falsely enclosing the text and entrapping them
in an eternal post-mortem image. The novel opens with the
obituary notice of Juan Carlos Etchepare and ends with the
death announcement of Nélida Fernandez Massa. Their deaths
never allow them to develop for the reader. They will be
seen throughout the text only as memories, alienated from
the other characters, and more importantly, alienated from
the opportunity to become alive in the text.

Chapters one and two begin the novel in the middle of
1947, ten years after the main events have transpired. The
obituary of Juan Carlos (chapter one) and the one-sided
epistolary of Nené to Doha Leonor, Juan Carlos’s mother
(chapters one and two) determine that the direction of the
narrative will go in a backwards fashion, nostagically

retelling a story. Nené’s letters are a series of requests

121
to Doha Leonor for the collection of love letters wrapped in
a sky-blue ribbon written to Juan Carlos during their
relationship, therefore providing continued interest in the
story. Nené’s one-sided correspondence establishes two
mysteries. First one must consider why she so anxiously
desires to retrieve letters that are over ten years old
(unless she had written some type of compromising
information). Secondly, the reader must ascertain the other
half of the correspondence from which he is distanced while
assessing the narrative from only Nené’s point of view.
Chapters three through twelve follow the pattern established
by the first two chapters, describing the events of
1935-1939. However, within those chapters, time is
transposed: in chapter three a text from 1935 is placed
after two frem 1937; the last excerpt of chapter six is
dated 'el 23 de agosto, 1937;' and chapter seven begins with
'el tres de julio, 1937, followed by a letter dated '23 de
agosto 1937' after several from April of that same year.
However it precedes texts in chapters seven and eight that
are dated 'julio' and "agosto 1937.' Chapters thirteen
through fifteen seem to take a forward direction into the
1940’s. More confusing, chapters ten, thirteen and fourteen
are not provided with dates, thus obscuring the distinction
between time frames. One must keep in mind that the
chronology of Bogpipag pintadas has been strategically
manipulated by an authorial presence, not solely to present

the narrative, but also to actively involve the wits of the

122
reader who can become entrapped by its very narrative twists
and turns. In the process of winding through the
Borgesian-like labyrinth, the reader can untangle the
convoluted readings that lie underneath. The final chapter
contains Nené’s obituary which would seem to neatly tie the
loose ends of the novel. Following her death announcement
is her husband’s symbolic burning of Nene’s and Juan
Carlos’s love letters (as one of Nené’s final requests). On
one hand, the mystery text literally goes up in smoke, thus
destroying their 'legend' and closing the pages of the
novel. On the other hand, Nené and Juan Carlos, along with
the fragments of his letters are metaphorically resurrected
to another plane.9 On the other hand, Bogpitas pintadas
does not neatly end. Its structure suggests a spiral that
leads not from beginning to end, but back and forth, up and
down through time and circumstance, narration and discourse
that constantly underscores the disjunctions between plot
and the story as a whole. The text seems to be constructed
so that it is never quite obvious just what story has been
presented or to whom it belongs. Because of the gulf
between the story and the narrated text, time is virtually
displaced from the perspective of the reader. In other
words, time plays a key role in manipulating the text and
reader; it is disjointed both in the text and beyond. As
mentioned above, the chronology is convoluted, not just from
chapter to chapter, but from within certain chapters as

well. It seems as if time had stood still throughout the

123
text; as if the point of perspective were snagged in one
place, where as Alfred MacAdam claims 'el tiempo no pasa,
5610 se acumula.'1° Each character is entrapped in time,
continually reliving the past from a distanced temporal
standpoint, not just wishing to recreate the moment, but to
be able to live nostalgically as they did during that
idealized epoch, alienated from their present. Hence, the
novel’s temporal plane continually shifts from one level to
another. First, time progresses on an objective realistic
level that functions to piece together the events that
transpire in the text. Temporality is transformed on a
second plane that in some instances converges with the
first, and other times attempts to efface it altogether.
The disparity between story and plot greatly depends on this
second temporal shift which is based on a subjective
sentimental perspective. The reader is given the task of
separating the potential texts by piecing together disparate
and/or conflicting information, or filling in the gaps
created by continual shifting temporal levels. What is
presented from both a realistic temporal plane (the action
from.1936-1938) and what appears on the page (accounts from
the nostalgic viewpoints of the 19405 and 19605) provide the
opportunities for various (mis)cues and (mis)readings,
potentially entrapping the reader within the strategical
temporal gaps. It is all but impossible to stifle a
subjective reader viewpoint; the text is not based upon

fact. Objective reality for the characters on one level can

124
be presented quite subjectively through the disparate story
presentation. Lastly, the concept of time is challenged by
the theme of death that acts as an underlying foundation of
the novel.

As mentioned previously, Bogpitas pintadas opens with
the death announcement of the protagonist, which ironically
underscores time’s uncontrollable power to sweep away a
young life:

Fallecimiento lamentado. La desaparicion del

senor Juan Carlos Etchepare, acaecida el 18 de

abril ultimo, a la temprana edad de veintinueve

afios, tras sorportar las alternativas de una larga

enfermedad, ha producido en esta poblacion, de la

que el extinto era querido hijo, general

sentimdento de la apesadumbrada sorpresa, no

obstante conocer muchos allegados la seria

afeccion que padecia.11
Juan Carlos’s obituary seems to close the door to any reason
to continue the text. However, time is constantly revived,
along with the memories of Juan Carlos that (re)construct
the text and his life. His legacy offered in disjointed and
conflicting views provide the psychological stimulus to
continue reading the text.

Juan Carlos is not the sole character to be presented
in retrospect. Pancho appears in the novel not only as a
memory of the other characters, but as a deceased entity
that continues to participate in the text long after his
death. Pancho’s status is emphasised through a particular
narrative strategy employed in the novel: a “day in the

life' objective observation by an omniscient narrator. This

type of verbal snapshot, as Jonathan Tittler points out,

125
“serves as periodic stablizers, textual anchors, orienting
aids.“12 It also contributes to the constant clashing of
temporal planes that both announce and contradict the
text.13
In chapters four and five, a camera-eye description
provides for the reader parallel routines of Nené, Juan
Carlos, Mabel, Pancho, and Raba and again the same strategy
is employed in chapter nine. However, the third appearance
of this narrative technique in chapter fourteen includes a
twist. The chapter, 'el dia sabado 18 de abril de 1947'
begins with the details of Juan Carlos’s death, followed by
Nené’s daily habits. Pancho’s description is given next,
although he was murdered in chapter eleven, '17 de junio
1939.'“ The presentation of Pancho’s remains as a
'living' part of the text confirms the deceptive quality of
time:
El ya mencionado dia sabado 18 de abril de 1947, a las
15 horas, los despojos de Francisco Catalino Paez
yacian en la fosa comun del cementerio de Coronel
Vallejos. Solo quedaba de él su esqueleto y se hallaba
cubierto por otros cadaveres en diferentes grados de
descomposicion, e1 mas reciente de los cuales
conservaba todavia el lienzo en que se los envolvia
antes de arrojarlos al pozo por la boca de acceso....
(222)
The passage of time is similar to the dead bodies heaped on
Pancho’s skeletal remains. Both, because of their
disjointed presentation, are shown in various stages of
(de)composition. They are entrapped in the confines of the

cemetary, unable to re-enter the world closed off through

death. The characters in the text are unaware of the

126
potential effacement of time and their deceased
acquaintance, yet in the reader’s hands both can greatly
determine the potential readings and directions of the text.
In the final chapter, 'el 15 de septiembre 1968,' a “slice
of life' of the characters appears one last time. The
identical description of Pancho’s state is presented again
with one variation. In the first observation, the fig tree
next to the common grave where Pancho is buried contains
'frutos maduros' (222), whereas in the latter, the tree 'se
la veia cargada de brotes color verde claro“ (250), as if to
falsely suggest the hope of renewed life, and perhaps
renewed text.

The fig tree symbolizes Pancho in life and in death,
resurrecting the memory of the fig tree at the police
station where Pancho had worked. The tree serves as a focal
point at which Nené would stare from her bedroom window
while idealizing her relationship with Juan Carlos. Juan
Carlos planned his seductions with Pancho under the fig
tree, and more overtly, Pancho erotically and metaphorically
picked the fruits of the tree with Mabel that led to their
illicit affair by taking advantage of the tree’s position
adjacent to Mabel’s window, thus making his secret seduction
possible. The fig tree serves as a link for both characters
and time that is, in one sense, effaced by death as Bogpitas
pintadas comes to its final chapter.

As the catalyst of temporality, Nené’s death is

announced in chapter sixteen, along with an elaborate

127
description of the newly placed plaques on Juan Carlos’s
grave, once again resurrecting his presence. Yet, the novel
does not close here. The revelation of the love letters
between Nené and Juan Carlos sends temporality into its
everlasting spiral, transporting the text and the reader
back to another time and place.

In addition to the constantly shifting and disparate
temporal planes, the text is authorially manipulated through
a combination of forms that contribute to narrative,
thematic and discursive strategies. A significant number of
these stem from Puig’s penchant to employ forms and
expressions of popular culture in his novels. Unlike‘pp
traicion de Rita Hayyorth and Beso de la mujer arafia, where
the use of the cinema predominates as a narrative technique,
Bogpitas pintadas employs a variety of mass culture products
as narrative conventions. In the aformentioned novels, Puig
uses the movies as a barometer for the chronology, in other
words, they place the novels in their time frame. In
Bogpitas pintadas, products of mass culture serve another
purpose: their variety and overuse provides the basis for
social critique and parody as well as underscoring the
dependence of the entrapment within nostalgia to portray
fiction. Puig has convoluted the variety of mass culture.
forms that stimulate all of the senses: the movies, the
tango, soap operas, newspaper and magazine articles, and the
serialized novel. The reader views, reads, and listens to

the mass culture products along with the character. The

128
most salient of those features also serves as the
scaffolding of the novel: the use of the 'folletin' as its
organizing structure.

The employment of the serialized fiction as the outer
structure of the novel is both complementary and
contradictory, depending on the perspective. It sets itself
up to be read.as a folletin on the one hand, and on the
other, lies a collection of dissimilar texts grafted
together with other narrative forms and genres.15 “Puig'

manipulates the 'folletin' as a form of reader
entrapment. The reader is falsely lulled into
expectations of 'veracity' when he is hit by the clash of
textual voices. Much criticism has been dedicated to this
very polemic.16 At question seems to be whether Bogpitas
pintadas should be interpreted as a true 'folletin' or as a
parody of one. In this case, the 'folletin' sets up the
novel to be read in a particular fashion, and at the same
time critiques its very form.17 From an authorial
standpoint, the use of the 'folletin' can be seen as a
manipulative strategy to steer the reader toward a
particular textual pattern, hence potentially entrapping him
in a specific mode of interpretation under the guise of the
sentimental/romantic novel.

Puig has stated that the use of the 'folletin' as an
organizing structure would capture the readers’ interest to
continue through the text:

I considered the idea of using the structure of the
serials but at the same time of sustaining it with a

129
lot of realistic detail. So suspense and romance had
to be emphasized, each chapter had to end at a crucial
moment. I narrated by 'escamoteando', by palming some
of the incidents--the way a magician does--and not
revealing them in their proper chronological order--the
tricks of the 'folletin.' (Christ, 54)
Puig has acknowledged that by using a popular art form, the
novel can become a source of critical analysis of itself:
Como la palabra 'folletin' esta tan desprestigiada, se
me ocurrio que poniéndola debajo del titulo ya obligaba
al lector a una lectura critica especial, a no esperar
'literatura' con mayuscula; advertirle que venia una
cosa distinta....(Sosnowski, 73)
Puig’s intention was to print Boguitas pintadas in
installments true to the "folletin,“ however publishing
demands would not permit it. Instead, the resulting texts
became a complete novel, divided as if each 'entrega' were a
separate installment. The obvious ploy of the 'folletin'
seems to question itself. The novel is set up not in
chapters like a typical novel, rather each section is marked
by the word 'entrega' and its chronological number. Thus,
the reader is cued and forced to read each section as if it
were a separate text that ends in suspense, only to await
the upcoming installment. If that were indeed the case,
then it would also be assumed that the reader would be given
a lapse in time between installments which would require
different reading strategies. Lucille Kerr contends:
Given that the text’s installments are not, in fact,
installments--they are not separated by the regular
temporal gaps that would help to produce the kind of
indeterminacy typical of the genre--and, given that the
reader’s appropriation of the text is thus coincident
with, but not determined (i.e. postponed or regulated)
by, the temporality of publication, as is the custom of

serial fiction, Bogpitas pintadas also renders
impossible the identity that its subtitle and chapter

130

headings insist upon affirming. (93)

With this novel, the reader only has to turn the page
to continue the fiction. The reader is potentially
deceived through the stereotypical cues of the 'folletin.'
One can note that the 'folletin' is directed at a particular
type of reader, one that Pamela Bacarisse suggests, does not
fit with Puig’s intended reader.18 The 'folletin' seems to
generally attract the type of person that the characters in
Bogpitas pintadas represent, those who escape into shallow
sentimental fiction without having to critically analyze it.

Ironically, these perfectly suited characters for the
'folletin' are unaware that their texts have become part of
one. More specifically, Andrés Amorés has provided a sketch
of the typical reader of the 'folletin;' one who is naive
and simple that follows traditional values.19 The reader
is almost always female, who is supposedly attracted to
sentimentality. Thus the characters in the novel act as
both model and imitator of the 'folletin.' We must
acknowledge the textual contributions from Juan Carlos, his
physician, Dr. Malbran; Pancho, and an omniscient narrator,
who stand on the outside of the workings of the 'folletin.'
Instead, the female characters offer their stories that
constitute the 'folletin.'

Through the constant juggling of narrative and
discursive elements under the guise of the 'folletin“-- such
as temporal distortion, elisions, and disparate narrative

techniques--the text offers another narrative entrapment

131
that arises from.the structure of the "folletin."20 Along
with the division of the novel into sixteen 'entregas,' Puig
has split the text into two equal halves provided with
epigraphs derived from.tango lyrics that abrogates the
intention of the 'folletin.' The first division, entitled
'Boquitas pintadas de rojo carmesi' (7) seems to confer with
the 'folletin,' that is, a subtitle full of life, potential
romance, and frivolity. However, the text confounds this
assumption by beginning immediately afterward with the
announcement of the protagonist’s death. Margery Safir’s
contentions show that the epigraph “es un significante
falso' (55). The red painted lips in actuality signal both
four women in the text (Mabel, Raba, Nené and Celina), but
also represent Juan Carlos’s sickness and the bloody sputum
which leads to the next epigraph, suggesting an underlying
linear narrative. The second half of the novel opens with
'Boquitas azules, violaceas, negras' (133), which serves two
purposes. One is to smoothly follow the first half by
confirming the death of Juan Carlos.

Secondly, it seems to close off the novel by suggesting
the impossibility of continuance for both the characters and
the text. The epigraph signifies death in two ways, one
which relates to the fiction and the other to the text as a
whole. As for the fiction, it points to the fact that death
has entrapped the characters (and reader) in a spiraling
time frame, constantly resurrecting the sickly image of Juan

Carlos. In regard to the latter, the second epigraph

132

undermines both the first epigraph and the title of the
novel, nullifying its concept.
VOICES FROM THE RADIO

Other more recent forms of mass culture serve a variety

of functions in the text. As in La traicion de Rita

Hayyorth and Beso de la mujer arana, characters not only use
popular art forms as escape mechanisms, but as a means of
identification as well. The radio is a prime source in
Bogpitas pintadas, especially those programs centered around
the tango.

The tango plays a greater role in the text, providing a
link between popular culture, text, fiction and the
extra-literary world. The sad, sardonic lyrics of the tango
provide a form of narration as well as escape for certain
characters. These sentimental songs reveal more than the
characters’ outlook on life. Ironically, the words of the
tango reflect the pessimism and futility of hope, in other
words, do not offer any encouragement for a better life,
rather they underscore the banal existence of the
characters. For Nené and Raba this form of popular culture
entertainment proves a vehicle for nostalgia to link past
with present, fantasy and reality. An omniscient narrator
reveals the women’s escape into fantasy on two different
levels. Nené’s involvement with the tango is nostalgic,
hoping to imitate the social images conveyed by the songs.
The narrator, one that seems to be distanced and objective

by describing frame by frame the song’s plot and Nené’s

133

subsequent response, captures Nene’s interpretation of the
tango’s objective. Following the presentation of
Nené’s first three letters of request to Doha Leonor (10 de
junio de 1947), the narrator provides a glimpse of Nené’s
cultural enjoyment, faithfully listening to a favorite radio
program, “Tango versus bolero“ (15). Nené does not
acknowlege the sharp, dramatic selections of the bolero.
Rather, she identifies with the sentimental tango that
loosely parallels Nené’s short-lived romance with Juan
Carlos--a young gaucho meets his love in the cold rain, only
to lose her in a storm. The moral of the song is that love,
like the flower, quickly blooms and dies. After a rendition
of a similar bolero that follows, Nené responds:

La audicion finaliza. Frente al espejo en que se sigue

mdrando, después de aplicar el lapiz labial y el cisne

con polvo, se lleva el cabello tirante hacia arriba

tratando de reconstruir un peinado en boga algunos afios

atras. (16)
Rather than overtly placing herself within the confines of
the tango, Nené attempts to recreate the young middle-class
image of ten years before, affirming the same objectives of
her correspondence to Doha Leonor, Celia’s mother. Raba, on
the other hand, views the tango on a deeper level,
transcending reality and absorbing herself directly into the
song lyrics. Raba is reminded of her alienation at the
bottom of the social scale, while she works as a maid at
Mabel’s house. She, Mabel and Nené had attended school

together where social distinctions where made evident by

their seating arrangement in class. The humiliation she

134

must bear by the fact that she is her schoolmate’s maid,
perhaps explains her excuse for her complete immersion into
the tango. To exacerbate her situation, she found herself
pregnant, and when Pancho left for training at the police
academy, her dreams for a happy life went up in smoke. Like
Nené, Raba’s escape into the products of mass culture stems
from the cause and effect relationship to her circumstances
and futile hope. However, Raba does not base her illusions
on nostalgic dreams of reliving the past like Nené, rather
she becomes the character in the song so that living in the
present will be more tolerable. Raba’s psychological
entrapment acts as a buffer to the dismal reality created by
her familial situation and the ramifications imposed by
society. Raba’s interior monologue in chapter eleven
transforms into two sad gaucho songs as she washes Mabel’s
clothes. As the lyrics reveal the event of the death of the
gaucho’s lover, Raba fantasizes about a circumstantial
meeting with Pancho in the street with her (“their“) baby
and Pancho’s acceptance of his fatherhood and the subsequent

responsibilities. Raba imagines what would occur if
she were to die. Another song mirrors her situation as she
sings the life of a young factory worker who dances the
tango with a handsome young man. She wonders whether she
will be thrown out of the factory for dancing with him, only
to have to work as a maid. Her personalization with tangos
supports her obsessive idealization of escape from her

circumstances with the father of her child. Her fantasy

135
comes full circle. One tune leads to the idea of their
unceremonious wedding, which in turn transcends her life
into a sad gaucho song that underscores the futility of her
dreams:

...entré al rancho en silencio y dos velas encendio,
al pie de la virgencita que sus ruegos escucho, decile
que no me olvide, virgencita del perdon, decile que su
gaucho 5e quedo sin corazon, tal vez por buena y por
pura Dios del mundo la llevo... . (170)

Raba is convinced that if the lover can pardon her gaucho,
then Raba can certainly forgive Pancho’s misgivings. The
theme of the tango ironically foreshadows Raba’s mistaken
hypothesis and chance meeting that occurs shortly afterward
--where Raba will knife Pancho as he slips out of Mabel’s
bedroom, violently underscoring her hopeless and pitiful
cirumstances.

Other forms of popular culture are employed to
manipulate the reader and characters as well. Beside the
serialized fiction and tango programs, the soap opera that
emanates from the radio plays a key role as a narrative and
thematic device. On one level, this particular form of mass
culture reveals its influence as a status symbol, which is
also evident in La traicion de Rita Hayyorth. One’s social
standing (as we note that Nene’s style of dress is modeled
after the suggestion of the tango) is compared to the radio
announcers who speak flawlessly: 'Nené no era una india
bruta: hablaba como una artista de la radio y al final de

las palabras debidas no olvidaba de pronunciar las eses'

(79). However, it is evident that Nené’s facade does not

136
help to boost her up the social ladder; she never achieves
beyond the status of package wrapper at the department store
in Coronel vallejos.

Nené’s failure and disillusionment to succeed in life
is emphasized through her strained dialogue with Mabel in
chapter thirteen. Instead of attempting to mask their
miserable marriages and unhappy circumstances, Mabel and
Nené opt not to create a facade of contentment. Their
dialogue reveals both their unhappiness and the continual
reiteration of the Juan Carlos theme. As the dialogue
deteriorates, they choose not to face each other through
direct speech. Rather, Mabel unearths her obsession with
the images perpetuated through mass culture entertainment
and convinces Nené to listen to the current most popular
soap opera of the region, 'El capitan herido,‘ to which
Nené, ironically has never listened.

The soap opera represents for Mabel what the tango does
for Nené--an outlet for nostalgic desire to idealize a life
that is impossible to grasp. The characters’ objective of
listening to the soap opera, as with other modes of pop
culture, lies in the act of escape, of enclosing, and
unknowingly entrapping themselves in the fictional world,
thus alienated from the real world. Secondly, the soap
opera, like the tango and other conventions of mass culture,
reinforces personal and social ideals to sell itself.
Neither Mabel or Nené can bring themselves to unmask their

true identity, therefore they turn to the products of mass

137
culture, which further alienate them from.reality. The
obvious, through their brief dialogue, is that they had been
short-changed in life. Both women were mesmerized (or as
they claim, in love) by the presence of Juan Carlos, yet he
slipped through their fingers. Instead, Nené quickly
married Donato José Massa, a public auctioneer 'con ojos
chiquitos y nariz carnuda' (192) and fled to Buenos Aires.
Perhaps Nené’s choice of spouses parallels her love for Juan
Carlos: both equate idealized escape from her monotonous
life. She could marry someone like Donato, an outsider who
could take Nené from her marginalized existence. As a
result, she finds herself in a sparsely furnished apartment
which she is too humiliated for her mother and friends to
see, stuck with 'dos hijos que no son nada lindos...que son
fefichos' (196). Instead of escaping the dull and stifling
existence of a small town, Nené has entrapped herself within
the four walls of her apartment, alienated from the very
existence she had created through the myths and ideals lent
by mass culture and society.

Mabel finds herself in the same situation. She marries
an unknown named Gustavo, un petiso mal hecho' (197). From
a social standpoint, Mabel had the most to lose. Of the
upper crust, she once had the opportunity to wed a
prospering Englishman from the same social class, a business
marriage more or less arranged by her father. However the
young man threatens a lawsuit against her father, thus

erasing another dream. First, she loses the ideal of true

138

love through the death of Juan Carlos. Then, the
opportunity to marry in order to maintain her high style of
living is swiftly snatched away. Thus, Mabel chooses to
involve herself in the idealized and benumbing world of mass
culture, much like Toto in La traicién de Rita Hayyorth.

The metadramatic technique of the radio serial, or
perhaps more appropriately, soap opera within soap opera,
plays two roles in Bogpitas pintadas. On one level the soap
opera parallels the lives of Nené and Mabel, identifying
with and exposing their underlying thoughts, feelings and
ideals. On another plane, the soap opera complements yet
overshadows the conventions of the 'folletin.' The 5 p.m.
soap opera that becomes the textual focus, narrative voice,
and escape mechanism for Nené and Mabel, functions as a
microcosm.of the novel, reflecting similar conflicts of the
larger fiction. The program is about a young, wounded
soldier who hides in the hayloft of a married couple. The
wife nurses him back to health and consequently falls in
love with him, Unfortunately, she cannot break the shackles
of her unhappy marriage and must accept her mediocre
circumstances. Like the 'folletin,' the soap opera works to
critique itself through its discourse and its extensive use,
thus making the reader conscious of its conventions to the
extent that the soap opera seems to parody itself as well as
its fictive frame. Mabel contributes further to the effect
that mass culture has on women through the printed word.

Her letter appears in an advice column in one of Argentina’s

139
vogue magazines. Although she does not use her name--rather
she signs off 'Espiritu confuso' (45)--, Mabel’s identity is
inferred through the details contained in the letter. She
pours her heart out to a "Dear Abby“ column in the popular
magazine, Mundo Femenino, where she reveals both her
calamity and the attitudes supported by mass culture. She
is in love with Juan Carlos, which she emphasizes his
'apuesta figura' (45), who not only is ill with a sickness
that is socially unacceptable, but she is set to marry a man
of her social standing who is not the true object of her
affections. She is willing to go on a four-day holiday with
him.to maintain peace in the family, however she is torn
because of her feelings for Juan Carlos. The response of
the letter reveals 'not only the style of cheap literature
(Eres muy joven y puedes esperar la llegada de un principe
azul... 45), but also its priorities“ (Bacarisse, 50).

Mabel is willing to consult an 'expert' and publicly
expose herself, although in a covert manner. More
importantly, the response to her letter shows the social
implications inferred by mass culture.21 Her mentor
advises Mabel that she is a typical teenager from.a happy
home. She warns that 'seguir con tu amorio (perdoname e1
término) significaria romper esa armonia familiar' (46).
Thus, maintaining family harmony and the rules imposed by
social standing are more important than following her heart.
These rules are underscored, and at the same time, subverted

by mass culture. After all, the ideals conveyed in the soap

140
opera, cinema, and tango certainly conflict with the
response of the advice column. The movies, although they are
perhaps a bit obscured by the other popular art forms in
this novel, also contribute to the deception aided through
the products of mass culture.

The perspective of three different social classes,
through the eyes of Mabel, Nené, and Raba, portray their
dependence for escape, but for somewhat different reasons.
Mabel, after an afternoon at the beauty parlor, leafs
through the newspaper for the movie section, able to choose
whatever release is playing. Her goal is to escape the heat
in the air-conditioned theatre with her aunt. When she
cannot find it, she wads up the paper and throws it. On the
other hand, Raba sees the opportunity to attend the 5-cent
movie as one of her few privileges in life. When she is
spurned that opportunity for having to serve a dinner party
for her employers, 'sin saber por qué tomo una alpargata del
suelo y la arrojo con fuerza contra una estanteria' (86).

In both cases, these women depend upon elements of mass
culture as their prime escape from the societal bonds in
which they are entrapped, and when they are unable to attend
the escape mechanism of the movies, they react in a violent
manner. Nené and Mabel use the movies as what Gilberto
Trivifios terms 'un mundo paradisiaco" (120). He points out
that they infuse their circumstances into the movie plots;
Nené lives happily ever after with Juan Carlos, while Mabel

imagines herself and Juan Carlos in the comedy of seduction

141

that she has just seen, tormented that they cannot kiss.
She later sees herself as the love of Robert Taylor or 'en
su defecto Tyrone Power' (128). Their complete immersion in
the products of mass culture edifies their self-alienation
and self-deception. From a readerly standpoint, the
extensive use of pop culture pulp causes an awareness not
only of the negative effects on the characters, but one that
calls for the extra-literary consciousness of the reader.
THE MYTH OF DON JUAN EXHUMED

From another angle, the male characters provide modes
of deception through myth, acting as both model and
imitator. Puig has constructed his male characters upon a
popular literary image that has proliferated and transcended
European texts, and in a modern sense, represents the
stereotypical 'macho' image of Latin America. Like mass
culture forms, the myth of Don Juan is both self-evident as
well as self-critical. The allusion to Juan Carlos as a
model of the myth, and its imitator cannot be easily
refuted. Lucille Kerr notes that Juan Carlos is 'both a
seductive model and a model of seduction of this text'
(Kerr, 80). His presence provides an organizing and
deceptive foundation of the novel, as well as a thematic
foundation. He inspires fantasy, disillusionment, and
deception on a figural level as well as on a metaphorical
one.

Juan Carlos seems to perpetuate the characteristics of

the Don Juan figure.” He successfully seduces a handful of

142
women from all classes, except Nené, whose love for him
remains eternally pure. The thought of hell and damnation
do not enter his mind, rather defiance of authority (in this
novel, both religious and medical) dominates his actions.
Juan Carlos would prefer to risk his health in order to
satisfy his passionate desires through the experience of
'bon vivant' ways:

si tenia que renunciar a vivir como los sanos preferia

morirse, pero que aunque no le quitasen las mujeres y

los cigarrillos lo mismo preferia morirse, si era a

cambio de trabajar como un animal todo el dia por cuatro

centavos para después volver a un ranco a lavarse bajo

el chorro de agua fria de la bomba. (65)

The allusion of Juan Carlos as a Don Juan figure is well
supported through the novel, whether it be from other
characters or from.himself.

To complete the image, Juan Carlos is supplied with the
typical sidekick Pancho, who attempts to create himself in
his mentor’s image. He not only lives to be like him, but
also spends his available time with his idol, serving as a
protector: 'Pancho le dijo que tuviera cuidado con ser
descubierto en casa ajena' (81). Pancho, of course, is of a
lower class than Juan Carlos and seemingly could never rise
above his idol.

The presentation of (Don) Juan Carlos in the text does
everything to undermine its mythical presence. Most obvious
is the fact that Juan Carlos never has the opportunity to
truly establish his own myth, nor does the reader see it

engendered, Juan Carlos begins the text as a deceased

fictive entity. Also, Pancho destroys the Don Juan figure

143
without Juan Carlos’s knowledge, by sleeping with one of
Juan Carlos’s forbidden seductees, Mabel. This represents a
conquest for Pancho in two ways. Mabel is off limits for
Pancho because of her higher social status. Secondly,
through his affair, Pancho deceives both his mentor and the
myth that he attempted to perpetuate. Juan Carlos is never
privileged to Pancho’s “triumph," thus in a sense parodying
both model and imitator. Poetic justice prevails with
Pancho’s violent murder by Raba who truly loved him,

Also, Juan Carlos is constructed through a memory, thus
he has no opportunity to redeem himself before the final
judgement, which is one preoccupation, along with a proper
Catholic burial, that invades Nené’s correspondence with
Dona Leonor), therefore his myth is anti-climatic. Instead,
the imitation of Don Juan is eternally resurrected in the
text, and in the end metaphorically rises with Nené in the
form.of the love letter, whose intention would annul itself
if they were written by the Don Juan model.

CORRESPONDENCE AS A FRAGMENTING DEVICE

The form.of the epistolary seems to link the fragments
of narrative. The text depends upon correspondence to
establish the relationship among characters as well as a
justification to read the novel. Only the 'hero' and
'heroine' (Juan Carlos and Nené) provide their thoughts on
paper, which is a key to reading the text. Thoughts cannot
be read by others, at least within the text, but in written

form.they are exposed to prospective treachery which cannot

144
so easily be effaced. Once Nené’s letters appear in the
first chapter, the mystery begins. Her letters reveal more
than a question of continued passion, they also determine
the direction of the text and covertly suggest a quick
slight of hand at authorial manipulation, leaving elusive
textual footprints that offer the choice of many paths to
follow. Nené’s one-sided correspondence to Juan Carlos’s
mother provides key referents and details to reading the
novel, mostly signaling to the characters and their
circumstances.

As the novel progresses, the letters become more
apparent for what they may have omitted as well. At first
glance, the focus seems to be on the past relationship
between Nené and Juan Carlos. As each letter follows,
Nené’s characterization is already well drawn. Her
nostalgic writing walks the reader through the past (19305)
and catches him/her up to the present time of the
correspondence. We do not learn much about Nené, rather we
become aware of what she has not achieved in life. It is
painfully apparent how monotonous and empty her life really
is through the obsession she displays for her former love.
Her existence seems to revolve around the acknowledgement of
her inquiries through a prompt response. Moreover, Nené’s
loneliness is underscored through the intimate bond that she
builds with each missive. She begins her first letter in a
completely formal manner: 'Estimada Dona Leonor' and signs

with 'Nélida Fernandez de Massa' (10). But as she

145
fabricates her relationship with the recipient, Nené
believes that she has established a true friendship. In her
last letter, Nené sends along her nostalgic newspaper
clipping of the Spring Dance of 1935 where she was crowned
queen, and more importantly, where she and Juan Carlos began
their relationship. Nené signs off with "La abraza, suya,
Nené (32).

Any description of her family is conspicuously absent.
In order to establish a frame of reference, she mentions in
her first letter that 'poco tiempo después de casarme nos
vinimos para aca con mi marido“ (10). Otherwise, Nené
mentions her husband only on one other occasion during the
description of her daily routine. Her loneliness and
alienation is evident: '...ya no aguantaba las ganas de
estar un poco sola. Ese es el unico alivio...“ (21).

Nené’s correspondence also provides information about
other potential stories of the text. Most evident is the
dispersions that Celina, the sister of Juan Carlos, holds
for Nené. She writes to Doha Leonor’s post office box
instead of to her home address in fear that Celina still
bears her grudge and may intercept the letters. Nené
provides the reasoning for Celina’ ill-will through two
avenues: her dead brother and her personal gain. Celina
blames Nené for Juan Carlos’s death, but even worse, she
sees Nené as the controller of her fate. Nené was never to
have participated in the Spring Dance of 1935 because of her

social standing. Only those who belonged to the Social Club

146
(determined by social status) were allowed, which would have
excluded Nené. However, the high school was providing a
dance number in which Nené participated, thus giving her the
opportunity to attend the dance where she would meet Juan
Carlos. Celina had other ideas. She conjured the ideal
solution for the escape out of her monotonous existence by
attempting to push Juan Carlos to like Mabel Saenz. Like the
rest of the characters, Celina looked to someone else to
rescue her from her circumstances. She had pushed Juan
Carlos toward money in the form of a young brunette. Celina
realized that if he had married Mabel, then Celina’s family
might be financially supported. Nené is the indirect cause
of Celina’s mediocre fate. This may seem like trivial
detail on a superficial level, yet it establishes the
anti-climatic ending of the novel when the reader discovers
that Celina authored the 'Dona Leonor letters.'

Nené’s letters are written on an extremely personal
level that are specifically meant for Dona Leonor’s eyes
only. Yet, the participation of an authorial figure is
evident through the explicit manipulation of the
correspondence. Not only are the letters interrupted by an
omniscient narrator, but the response is absent, thus
demanding a number of inferred readings. The objective of
Nené’s privacy is obliterated through both the reader and an
authorial force.

Nené’s letters to Mabel confirming their friendship and

providing the details of her wedding, which also appear in

147

chapter nine, seem to provide a solid thematic and
discursive foundation for the text. That image is quickly
eroded in chapter fifteen when it is revealed that Celina
was the author of the absent correspondence, a fact
privileged only to the reader, yet Nené alludes to Celina’s
treachery without knowing it:

...tengo ganas que me siga escribiendo, una cosa que me

sorprendié es el pulso que tiene para escribir, parece

letra de una persona joven, la felicito, y pensar que

en los ultimos tiempos ha sufrido una desgracia tan

grande. No es que Usted se las hace escribir por otra

persona, averdad que no? (14)
Nené is unaware of Celina’s audience as well as any other.
Her letters were meant for one addressee, but due to
authorial play, Nené’s correspondence is both displayed and
displaced, entrapped in a snare of wits. To add to the
manipulation and confusion, Celina had kept some of the more
revealing letters between Nené and Juan Carlos, along with
those that Nené had sent in 1947, and forwarded them to
Nené’s husband. Once again, the late and anti-climactic
revelation of the letters underscores reader deception.
Celina’s plans would seem to preclude any happiness for
Nené, however, as David Southard observes, its consequences
are hardly mentioned by Nené: 'Fue hace dos semanas....Ahora
él esta arrepentido (243).23 Thus the deceptive tactics
through the epistolary carry the potential to turn on both
the reader as well as on itself.

Juan Carlos offers epistolary contributions as well.

His letters though do not transcend time, rather they seem

to refute other 'texts' within the novel as well as his own.

148
His correspondence does not appear until the middle of the
text (chapters seven and eight), where he writes his letters
from.the sanatorium. Firsthand, they support and subvert
the Don Juan myth. He composes correspondence to Mabel and
Nené, professing true love, a suspicion that Nené admits to
in her requests to Doha Leonor: '51 1e da mucho trabajo
saber cuales eran las cartas para mi me puede mandar todas,
yo le devuelvo después las que no me corresponden' (19). On
the other hand, the image of Juan Carlos seems to be
undermined through his simplicity. He must consult the
professor down the hall of his bedroom to proofread his
correspondence to correct his numerous grammatical and
spelling errors--again another detail privileged only to the
reader.

Vital information is contained in Juan Carlos’s letters
that confirms that he is corresponding with more than one
person. As mentioned previously, through a letter to Nené,
Juan Carlos reveals Pancho’s death, both providing key data
to the reader as well as the anti-climax for the next
chapter that acts out Pancho’s death scene. It is obvious
that Juan Carlos is a connsumate liar and like Nené, unaware
that the reader is attuned to his flaw. Not only are his
contradictory love letters exposed, but documentation from
his doctor supports his weakness. We note that in chapter
seven, shortly after Juan’s installation into the
sanatorium, a letter (23 de agosto, 1937) from Dr. Malbran

to his colleague reveals that Juan Carlos 'no obedece el

149

tratamiento' (104). In chapter nine, Juan Carllos’s
displaced letter (19 de agosto, 1937) to Nené states
otherwise: 'Hoy hago una promesa, y es que voy a seguir
todas las indicaciones de los médicos' (118). Juan does not
solely lie to others, he convinces himself as well of his
fabrications: 'cuando deje este lugar es porque voy a estar
sano' (119). Through his falsehood, Juan Carlos unveils the
ironic truth: unlike the others, he wants to return to
Coronel Vallejos. Juan Carlos can go back to the source; he
is the only one to completely live the lie that he and
others have created for him. His fabricated image is
further supported by the textual distance as well. What
appears on the page is a re-written and re-created shadow of
an image, built from Juan Carlos as well as from.those who
surround him.

Beside authorial manipulation, the characters within
the fiction and the forms of narration play a key role in
determining textual play. As we have seen, one-sided
dialogue, standard dialogue, stream of consciousness,
documents, and the epistolary have contributed to the
complexity of the narrative form of “WBoquitas pintadas“W
Yet, a trait uncommon to Puig’s novels is evident in
Bogpitas pintadas: the contributions of an omniscient
narrator, juxtaposing mediated and unmediated discourse, in
other words internal discourse and one based on direct
communication with the reader (Bacarisse, 42). Bacarisse

notes that the latter is based on four kinds of relator who

150
plays the role of:

the transcriber who presents something already written

by someone else (newspaper items, for example); the

objective narrator, describing for instance, the decor
of Mabel’s room; the objective classifier, who gives
ordered, official sounding information from a position
of omniscience (this is not a rhetorical device of

course), and the subjective narrator. (Bacarisse, 42)
This combination of outside narrator/transcriber provides
constant attention devices for the reader, who can adjust
from several different types of direct (and indirect)
discourse. The 'outside' narrator links the discourse from
within. His objective narration--for example, in chapter
two he provides Juan Carlos’s "Album de fotografias' --
provides an anchoring device as well as static frames of
reference for the reader. These 'verbal snapshots“ freeze
both temporality and characters in a particular point of
reference (Tittler, 191).

The omniscient narrator also seems to have a stablizing
effect on the text, offering the histor’s point of view in
order to fill in textual gaps. For example, the
contribution of the “day in the life' comparison of each
character where each reveals 'su mayor deseo y su temor mas
grande“ seems to parallel and link each major character and
their 'texts.' However, the narrator’s presence may be
deceptive. Puig’s use of an outside or omniscient narrator
would seem.to be an unnecessary technique. Vital
information could be easily provided through the other

previously mentioned conventions of this text. Yet, the

addition of another narrative form has the same effect as

151
the other forms. The proliferation of dissimilar narrative
devices not only obscures the text but also turns on and
comments upon itself.
SELF- INCRIMINATION

One final source of entrapment, the characters
themselves, seem to represent the driving force of the text.
Simply by their existence, they contribute to the tension
created by the text. Their monotonous lives greatly
determined by the confines of social class, contrast with
the direct and indirect presentation of their stories. The
themes and discourse that result from the narrative
structure and voice tend to marginalize the characters from
their own text, manipulated by their own hand as well as a
higher authority.

One character benefits from the narrative. Nené, who
contributes to the development of the image of Juan Carlos,
transforms into the focal point through her unexpected and
sentimental death. Her passing attaches a bundle of emotion
along with it. Nené’s death ends the novel, yet the
denouement--if her death can be classified as such--is
somewhat anti-climatic, since the text takes both characters
and reader on a journey through the continually resurrected
past based upon the 'hero’s' death. On the other hand,
Nené’s death shifts the thematic focus from her relationship
to Juan Carlos, to her life and subsequent disillusion. The
final blow is the destruction of the love letters that

falsely represented and guided her life, an effacement of a

152
particular text at Nené’s request. Instead of being buried
with an illusion, she finally faces reality as she reaches
the end of her life:

Habia hecho pedido debia ser cambiado, en lo que atafiia

a las cartas. Ahora su deseo era que en el atafid le

colocaran, dentro de un pufio, otros objetos: un mechon

de pelo de su finica nieta, el pequefio reloj pulsera
infantil que su segundo hijo habia recibido como regalo
de ella al tomar la primera comunién, y el anillo de

compromiso de su esposo. (251-252)

Nené seems to have finally escaped the hand of
deception that had held a firm grip on her life. The reader
as well must come to terms with Nené’s transcendence to a
fully developed human being through death.

Another character seems to have fled from her
circumstances. Raba, the lowest on the social ladder found
a way to climb out of her misery. She had been controlled
by the upper class not only economically and socially, but
emotionally as well. The strongest example is Mabel’s
manipulation of Raba that masked the revealing details of
Pancho’s murder to the police (and consequently, Mabel’s
illicit affair with him). Mabel, who should have been the
happiest by social standards, fades away bit by bit. Raba,
in some ways represents the pinnacle of reality and seems to
enjoy a “happy ending.‘ Although she completely involves
herself in the tango, she is no more entrapped than any
other character. Raba seems to recognize the reality of her
situation and makes little attempt to mask it. In the last

chapter, the omniscient narrator offers a final 'day in the

life' glance at the characters which provides the outcome of

153
everyone’s life. Juan Carlos, Nené, and Pancho are dead;

Celina and Mabel seem to have been swallowed by the
earth as well--the living seem to merely exist. On the
other hand, Raba had become a concubine to a landowner who
has died. She had a daughter by him who is about to marry a
neighbor.

Panchito is happily married and have welcomed Raba into
their home. Her story, as with the rest of the chapters, is
juxtaposed with her co-creators of the text, mirroring yet
conflicting with the remaining narratives.

CONCLUSION

The discursive and thematic paradigms found in.§pgp;pa§
Pintadas are derived from narrative techniques that are both
traditional and non-traditional, a trait not so uncommonly
found in contemporary Latin American literature. Bogpitas
pintadas is based on constantly shifting temporal planes,
one that serves as an objective chronology, others as
subjective points of relating the text. The result is a
disparity between story and plot, opening the possibily to
expose underlying texts. Time and perspective change from
chapter to chapter as well as within to further disjoin the
narrative fragments. As time erodes a ”stable' foundation,
the narrative scaffolding constantly twists and turns. The
conventions of mass culture entertainment in Bogpitas
pintadas follow the pattern of La traicion de Rita Hayyorth,
yet they transcend its usage. This text goes beyond the

cinema to act as a narrative device as well as a

154

chronological marker. Rather, the products of mass culture
invade the text as a narrative voice, a structural base,
thematic and generic paradigms, as well as a critique of
their very conventions. Whether this text parodies these
devices is still a point of contention. Yet, parody is not
the issue at hand in this analysis. Puig’s overuse of mass
culture products draws the role of author and reader into
play, perhaps more than any other novel that he has created.

The manipulation and portrayal of mass culture has
drawn attention to the author as doling out part of the
responsibility of "divine intervention“ to the reader. The
latter must actively participate in the creation of the
novel, yet the proliferation of mass culture and myth, both
derived from.present and past, conflict with and complement
the pre-textual myths taken from the extra-literary world,
once again offering the potential for a variety of readings
based on the infusion of the parameters of myth established
by the reader and juxtaposed with their portrayal in the
text .

The traditional form of the epistolary is seen in
another light as well. As with Puig’s first novel, Bogpitgs
pintadas uses the convention of letter writing to expose
underlying deception and to obscure it as well. In fact,
the emphasis lies on what is hidden instead of the one side
of the correspondence that is revealed. Yet, although the
text abounds with a proliferation of techniques, genres, and

narrative forms, which coexist and create a very dynamic

155
literary reality, the focus always returns to the sad,
monotonous lives of the characters who have also built their
beliefs upon the same ideals reflected and confounded in the
text. Thus, Bogpitas pintadas transcends the self-reflexive
text. One may contend that, instead it mirrors everything
that an authorial force, the reader and the fictive entities
provide--the boundaries for potential readings have been
re-written and at the same time effaced, re-created, and

welcomed to once again build upon its creative sources.

NOTES

1. See Pamela Bacarisse, 'The First Four Novels of
Manuel Puig: Parts of a Whole?“ Ibero-Amerikanishes Archiv,
IV, 4 (November, 1978), 253-263. She refutes the general
consensus that Bogpitas pintadas is a mere continuation of pa
traicion de Rita Hayworth.

2. La traicion de Rita Hayworth takes place between
1933 and 1939 whereas Boguitas pintadas covers the period
between 1935 and 1968.

3. See Ronald Christ, 'An Interview with Manuel Puig,'
Partisan Review 44 (1977): 52; Jorgelina Corbatta,
'Encuentros con Manuel Puig,' Revista Iberoamericana 49
(1983), 591-620; Saul Sosnowski, "Entrevista con Manuel
Puig,' Hispamérica 3 (1973), 69-80.

4. 'Manuel Puig’s Heartbreak Tango: Women and Mass
Culture,' Latin American Literapy Review. Her detailed study
conentrates on this novel as a 'meta-serial...that Puig has
utilized as a pervasive mass cultural format which is common
to radio and television soap Operas, comics, continuing
series in magazines, newspapers, movies and television, as
well as the early novel itself' (29).

5. Manuel Puig, 'El folletin rescatado,' Interview
conducted by Emir Rodriguez Monegal, Revista de la
Universidad de México 27.2 (1972): 32.

6. In an interview with Ronald Christ, Puig defends the
basis for the development of Bogpitas pintadas: 'I had
admired these people [upon whom I had based my characters],
and I had feared them and rejected them at the same time--
their strength, their use of authority was unpleasant to me.
Meanwhile they had a certain shine, a self-assurance that was
fascinating.... The story was all about failure: the
failure of people who had believed in all the lies of
authority. An in the rhetoric of passion too. They had
believed the words of the songs: love was something that
everything else had to be sacrificed to. But, these
middle-class people had not really acted according to
passion. Their real attitude was a scheming one, a
calculating one--a Catholic, middle class, cold approach to
things, always direct to climbing a little further up on the
social scale. As a matter of fact, they had betrayed their
belief in passion by their conduct“ (54).

156

7. 'Mitologia: otro nivel de metalenguage en Bogpitas
pintadas,' Revista Iberoamericana 90 (1975): 47-58.

8. 'The Fiction of Popular Design and Desire: Manuel
Puig’s Bogpitas pintadas,' MLN 97.2 (1982): 411.

9. Unlike Juan Carlos’ letters to Nené, her letters to
Juan Carlos, which had been wrapped in pink ribbon, had never
been untied. Therefore, When incinerated in a bunch, they
did not come apart and their ashes were not spread.

10. 'Las cronicas de Manuel Puig,' Cuadernos
Hispanomericanos 274 (1972): 105.

11. Quotes are cited from Manuel Puig, Bogpitas
pintadas, (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1968).

12. 'Order, Chaos, and Re—order: The Novels of Manuel

Puig,' Kentucky Romance Quarterly 30.2 (1983): 191.

13. See Lucille Kerr, Suspended Fictions: Reading Novels
by Manuel Puig (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1987), 80-130, for a

detailed study of the temporal play of the novel. She refers
to the constant shifting of temporal planes as analeptic and
proleptic movements, that both contributes to the models of
seduction and suspends the fiction above the text.

14. Although the exact date of Pancho’s death is not
provided until chapter twelve in a formal police report
(181), Juan Carlos alludes to the event in a letter to Nené
dated '28 de junio' in chapter eleven.

15. The concept of 'grafting' of texts by the use of the
'folletin' in Bogpitas pintadas was introduced by Severo
Sarduy in, 'Notas a las notas... A propésito de Manuel Puig,'
Revista Iberoamericana 72.36 (1976), 555-567.

16. For a detailed study of the use of the 'folletin'
in Bogpitas pintadas, see Alicia Andreu, 'El Folletin: De
Galdés a Manuel Puig,' Revista Iberoamericana 49 (1983),
541-546; Lucille Kerr, 'A Succession of Popular Designs:
Bogpitas pintadas,' Suspended Fictions: Reading Novels by
Manuel Puig; Alfred MacAdam, 'Las Cronicas de Manuel Puig,'
Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 274 (1972), 85-106; Julio
Rodriguez-Luis, 'Boguitas pintadas: aFolletin unanimista?,'
gin Nombre 5.1 (1974), 50-56; Severo Sarduy, I'Bogpitas
pintadas: parodia e injerto,' pp; 321 (1969), 71-77;
Gilberto Trvifios, 'La destruccion del verosimil folletinesco
en Bogpitas pintadas,' Texto critico 9 (1978), 117-130.

 

 

17. See Douglas Thompson, Manuel Puig’s Bogpipas
pintadas: True Romance of Our Time," Critigpe 23.1
(1981),37-44. He contends that 'Bogpitas pintadas attacks

157

the very thing it borrows from so freely: popular sentimental
art forms" (43).

18. See in particular pages 48-51 where Bacarisse
describes the typical 'folletin' reader as well as the common
traits found within the art form. She contends that they do

not exist in Bogpitas pintadas.
19. Subliteraturas (Barcelona: Ariel, 1974), 141-142.

20. See Severo Sarduy, 'Bogpitas pintadas: parodia e
injerto,“ “WSur‘W 321 (1969), 71-77. He posits that the
folletin constantly points to itself, 'aparato cuya finica
funcion es la ostentacion de su engranaje' (72). According
to Sarduy, the result in Bogpitas pintadas is “la
transgresién parédica, el doble irrisorio del folletin“ (73).

21. Ellen McCracken emphasizes that one of the
overriding principles of mass culture (and popular culture)
products is 'a commodity which is bought and sold on the
market, one which poses no threat to the dominant order. (27)

22. I refer to Tirso de Molina, El burlador de Sevilla,
1630; Juan de Zorrilla, Don Juan Tenorio, 1844.

23. David Southard, 'Betrayed by Manuel Puig: Reader
Deception and Anti-Climax in His Novels,' AWLatin
American AW '
AWLiterary Review“w 9 (Fall-Winter 1976): 24.

158

EL BESO DE LA MUJER ARANA
THE SPIDER AND THE FLY

Manuel Puig’s fourth novel, El beso de la mujer arana
(1976)1 demonstrates his greatest manipulation of

narrative conventions, use of popular culture, and shifting
voice of authority. As in La traicién de Rita Hayyorth,
Bogpitas pintadas, and Sange de amor correspondido this

novel offers an authorial voice that seems to be
conspicuously and deceptively absent. Puig has evidently
strayed from traditional techniques, delegating authorial
control to the characters or reader, only to snatch it away
in the text’s final pages. This void does not leave the text
without a controlling force, but makes it difficult to
identify or pin down. The absence of authorial omnipotence
underscores Puig’s penchant for authorial and textual
manipulation. He allows the reader to participate in the
(re)writing of the novel in order to give him the impression
that he indeed has either identified the controlling voice,
or has gone-as far as to be part of it. Upon reading the
text, one can easily become captured in its deceptive
entrapments that have been laid out by formal structure,

narrative techniques and authorial voice. Once the reader

159

has unearthed one strategy or reading of one piece to the
puzzle, another overtakes him.

El beso de la mujer arafia focuses upon two characters,
Luis Alberto Molina and Valentin Arregui Paz, whose full
names are not provided until chapter eight in a formal
police report. They are imprisoned in the Villa Devoto
penitentiary on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, physically
and socially alienated from the rest of society. Molina, a
homosexual, has been sentenced to eight years in prison for
the corruption of minors. Valentin, a self-professed
Marxist revolutionary, is serving an indefinite sentence for
an unspecified disturbance relating to a factory strike.

The majority of the novel takes place within the four
walls of the cell except for Molina’s meetings with the
Director, the police report that describes Molina’s short-
lived freedom, and Valentin’s mysterious interior monologue.

To pass the time within the confines that have
physically entrapped them, Molina narrates film
recollections of the 19305 and 19405 to Valentin that
becomes infused with their dialogue. Both dialogue and
cinematic narration are difficult to separate or
distinguish. For example, the novel begins with the
narration of the movie,'The Panther Woman" which is not
revealed until much later when Valentin interrupts by asking

160

161

questions about the movie. Until that point, the cinematic
discourse is presented as if it were the plot of the text.
As in Puig’s other novels, action is not a key factor in the
story. Very little transpires within the time frame of April
4, 1974 to October 25, 1975.2 Instead; the plot focuses on
the establishment of Valentin’s relationship with Molina and
the struggle for psychological and emotional control which
provides the basis for their web of deception.

Both Molina and Valentin implicitly scheme to betray
the other. Both have motives for deception but it is only
made gradually clear to the reader. Molina has the chance
for early parole if he can coerce valentin in revealing
information about his revolutionary comrades. Valentin
allows Molina to develop an emotional and physical
relationship in order to attempt to use him as a potential
messenger to his fellow revolutionary members once he is
paroled (although Molina’s imminent release is not announced
until chapter 8). Molina, on the other hand, attempts to
fulfill his emotional needs and physical desires through
befriending and eventually seducing Valentin. Neither can
escape the chains of physical, emotional, and psychological
entrapment. They are willing to become entrapped in order to
deceive. Molina is the victim of the prison/government’s
scheme to expose leftist activities. It seems that Molina’s
life is worth much less than apprehending anti-government
members. Valentin as well sacrifices his sexual preference

to befriend Molina. Valentin and Molina betray each other,

162
as well as themselves. The reader, also can become ensnared
in the web spun by their implicit schemes.

Puig, too has spun a complex web that is tightly
interwoven by a deceptive formal structure, varying levels
of dialogue and narrative voice, and authorial control. To
analyze one strand of the whole is to risk becoming
entangled in several interconnecting and underlying
counterparts. Through the analysis of El beso de la mujer
ppppg, I will unmask the individual strands of the web along
with their potential to deceive and entrap the reader. I
will examine the levels of entrapment and alienation through
the text’s superficially simplistic formal structure that
masks its underlying complexity. SecondLy, generic and
narrative techniques that vary from political and cinematic
discourse, to footnoting, not to mention the role of pop
culture, play key roles in textual entrapment and
alienation. Also the manipulation of an authorial and
authoritative voice continually shift the potential readings
of the text. Through the twists and turns of shifting
authorial voice, narrative technique and dialogue, Molina
and Valentin’s individual schemes of deception and
entrapment surface, and at the same time, unearth other
possible readings. The precarious relationship between
reader, author and text takes precedence in the
interpretation of El beso de la mujer arafia, which both
opens the text and the potential for reader alienation and

entrapment.

163

Early in the novel, the establishment of Valentin’s
relationship with Molina and struggle for emotional,
psychological, and narrative control is reflected through
the prisoners’ private dialogue, film narrations, and other
narrative devices, such as stream of consciousness, prison
documents, and script-like dialogues between "El director y
el procesado.' These varying narrative devices display both
the quest for narrative control as well as a premise for
textual seduction. One overt narrative technique binds
characters and reader—-the presence of cinema as a narrative
voice.

Valentin and Molina pass the time away in the prison
cell while Molina narrates his favorite Grade B movies to
his cellmate. A function of this type of medium in the novel
becomes cinematic discourse which seduces character and
reader alike. The mass-culture Hollywood Grade B films that
appear in El beso de la mujer arafia? follow a simplistic
pattern. These movies are easily understandable, many times
with contrived plots. The ideals as well display a
superficial simplicity. The film tends to move toward
idealized truths that always encounter happy endings. The
movie also seems to be based on 'infantile logic' (Bordwell,
159) Yet, for all its obtuse characteristics, the spectator
(which includes character and reader alike) is easily
convinced to watch, precariously lured into the trap of
self-absorption. The cinema, as well as other narrative

techniques, structure and manipulative authorial voice

164
contribute to the overall premise of entrapment and
alienation of El beso de la mujer arafia. The web is held
together by a common thread that weaves the text together:
the stifling element of repression.

This topic is not unfamiliar to Puig’s readers. His
previous novels implicitly criticize repressive Argentinian
control of the Peron regimes of 1946-55 and 1973-74.‘ Like
Puig’s previous works, he once again sets his novel in
Buenos Aires during a period under the grips of an
oppressive dictatorship. More specifically, the novel takes
place in the most repressive atmosphere possible: in the
prison Villa Devoto on the outskirts of the city. But on
the contrary, in this text the decades of the 19305 and
19405 are not the focus, rather the author’s present of the
19705 serves as the time frame. Secondly, whereas in his
previous novels the subject of political repression during
the regime of Juan Peron may be covertly criticized, this
theme indeed significantly shapes El beso de la mujer arafia.
Juan Goytisolo points out the novel’s potential to expose to
society the destructive effects of such gripping
governmental control:

[Es] en efecto testimonio demoledor, implacable del mal

que corroe no 5610 a la Argentina, sino a la totalidad

de Latinoamérica: de la monstruosa piramide de opresion

politica, social y moral que aplasta a los hombres y

mujeres del continente en nombre de unos valores cuya

inanidad y mentira resulta cada dia mas flagrante.5
Although the time frame has changed, the atmosphere has not.

The Peron dictatorship had been regenerated during the 19705

with the same ideologies and oppressive attitudes as in its

165

earlier dictatorship. Puig’s perspective of the latter era
of 1973-74 though, stands from a distanced view. Whereas he
wrote his earlier novels based upon memories of his
childhood, El beso de la mujer arana was composed while he
lived in New York City, geographically alienated from.the
reality of his native land. This novel was censored in
Argentina, due to its critical overtones against the
government. Thus, like its characters, El beso de la mujer
ppppa spent time alienated from its representative society.

The criticism of Argentina’s repressive political and
societal situation (or that of Latin America) is manifest in
El beso de la mujer arafia. The text focuses on two
imprisoned men who represent the margins of society. Their
prison reports in chapter eight reveal that neither was
arrested for a specific crime. Rather, it seems that both
Valentin and Molina are convicted for their potential danger
to topple an ideal society. They are marginalized within
the cell under the scrutinizing eye of prison officials
(who, of course are representatives of the government), as
well as from.the society that rejected them. These victims
of society, government, or perhaps even fate, discover that
they do not stand on opposite poles as it would seem,
Nevertheless, neither character can seem to break the bonds
that the government has imposed on them, Valentin and
Molina’s demise points to entrapment which they helped
create. Once Molina acheives his freedom by cooperating

with prison officials, he is gunned down in a train station

166
as he is about to meet with Valentin’s comrades. Once
again, the trickster is duped by his own hand. Valentin,
too is unable to escape the bonds of repression. His final
appearance shows him in a morphine-induced dream, attempting
to escape the pain of a prison torture session.

The element of repression runs even deeper than a
political level in the novel. Various strategies contribute
to the deceptive twists of El beso de la mujer arafia,
revealing a complex scheme of power and control. Perhaps
the most covert is the novel’s formal structure.

STRUCTURAL CHAOS

The formal structure of this novel seems to follow a
linear, clear-cut path that takes the story and the reader
chronologically from April 4, 1974 to October 25, 1975. It
is curious that this novel is so specifically ordered when
the concept of time means little to two prisoners serving a
“timeless ' sentence. What appears to be a tightly ordered
text is actually one that is threatened by chaos. Puig
follows the same patterns of his previous works by
structuring the text with sixteen chapters divided in two
symmetrical parts.

The first half of the novel seems to develop a mutual
relationship between two men of opposite ideals, deeds and
desires. However, the final chapter of this division sends
the text to an abrupt halt, as Pamela Bacarisse asserts:

It is only when the reader, too, has been lulled into
an attitude of complaisant indulgence that the bombshell

is dropped. In the strategically-placed chapter eight, we
discover that Molina had in fact been planted in Cell 7

167
in the previous April...the stakes are as high as they
could be: Molina is playing for his freedom and, too,
his peace of mind and happiness, for if he serves out
his full sentence it is almost certain that he will
never again see his old and infirm mother. This
revelation obliges the reader to reconsider, if not
re-read, everything that has gone before it, and this
has the same effect as a second reading of a mystery
story, when the criminal’s identity is known.6
This discovery of ulterior motives divides the text as a
counteracting force of 'engafio' versus "desengafio' where the
final pages cannot offer a solution to the textual
entanglements.

Unlike the other novels, El beso de la mujer arafia
strays by not only following a linear pattern, but also
lacks many of the other novels’ characteristics that further
(or in Puig’s case, halt) the progression of the action,
such as fragmentation and repetition. In other words, Puig
has omitted the glitter of his 'acotaciones,' such as the
epigraphs of La traicion de Rita Hayworth. In its place is
the ironic use of kitsch.7 Jonathan Tittler contends that
Puig uses kitsch in two ways:

First its predictable regularity suggests that the

novels are consumer-oriented, mass-produced pulp

literature, which, if certain passages were lifted out

of context, they would resemble. Second, the
symmetrical structure immposes a new context of strict
order on the chaotic, contradictory, disconnected
mass-media material. (188)
The paradigms of kitsch, or more precisely, movies from the
19305 and 19405, are used as a framing device that shifts
narrative focus between the diverse sections of the text.

This shift between popular and literary worlds is pronounced

in the play between film and dialogue that is established

168

from the onset of the novel. Molina narrates his vast
library of old films to Valentin to make the eternal passage
of their prison term.more bearable. These plots are
interspersed with framing dialogues that range from simple
conversation to psychoanalysis and the prisoners’ innermost
fears and desires. Jonathan Tittler contends that as the
novel progresses and Valentin and Molina’s relationship
grows that:

a curious textual process unfolds: the frame and the

picture-story change places in relative importance, the

movies becoming flat and insipid while the characters

take on dimension. Like an art-gallery customer who has

spilled paint thinner on a canvas, the reader is left

staring at the valuable frame. (194)
It might seem that the gap between cinematic narration and
the dialogue generated from such reception would easily be
discernable. On the contrary, the two are linked together
by thematic and narrative bonds that constantly reflect each
other. The film narrations that spring forth from.Molina’s
'picture-perfect' memory are inseparable from the definition
of his character and linguistic ticks. They are not only an
extension of Molina, but also provide him with the facade of
narrative control. This convolution of film and dialogue
leaves the reader with a puzzle to piece together as he
takes part in the narrative process.

One more structural complication can be noted by the
interpolation of film narration. Puig’s quixotic
intercalations reflect the stories of old, however with a

modern twist. Instead of having a character relate tales to

other fictive entities without bowing out of the picture,

169
Puig has delegated the cinematic narrative to tell the
stories of the fictive entities. Yet, in order to come to a
deeper understanding of the precarious relationship between
film.and fiction, we must take into closer consideration the
narrative devices, more specifically, the role of the
cinema. E
VOICES FROM BEYOND THE MARGINS

Not only is the film a unique form of narration, but
also its presentation within the dialogue poses a deceptive
narrative statement. The narrow demarcation between reality
and fantasy is quickly and often erased throughout the text.

Larger-than-life images and star personas of the movie
screen offer both an escape mechanism as well as paradigms
and prototypes of social norms that 'provide a mirror where
the viewer can recognize himself in the counterfeit image it
throws back of him.“ (Pellén, 186) Thus the spectator is
invited to entrap himself in the gap between what is
portrayed as reality and what truly exists. The glitter of
the Hollywood movies provide the opiate to deaden the
reality of existence, or in the case of Valentin and Molina,
to survive the oppressive pain of reality.

In El pesp de la mujer grade the focus is set upon the
actual escape mechanism instead of the characters
themselves. This is emphasized by the fact that the
dialogue between Molina and Valentin is indicated only by
slashes. Their names are not even introduced until pages 18

and 25 respectively. Nor does the reader discover their

170
is offered to the reader.

These details seem trivial, thus taking a back seat to
the films. The opening paragraph of the novel presents a
movie, not the characters. The reader, however, is unaware
that the narration is actually a recollection of a film,
There is no indication of it until page 13 when dialogue
interrupts the film narration:

---Para la colega arquitecta.

---aC6mo sabes?

---Nada, lo acerté, no mas.

---Vos viste la pelicula.

Once the reader discovers the source of narration, the
narrative fragments begin to fit together. The discovery of
the split narrative voice denotes another role given to the
reader. Already required to participate in the
Borgesian-like puzzle, the reader now becomes part of a
fictive audience as well. He, like Valentin is an active
spectator to Molina’s narration. It is as if the prison
cell has become enlarged to entrap the reader.

Along with providing a listening ear to Molina’s
stories, Valentin’s contribution to the narration is to move
the story along by asking questions about details or
attempting to take control of the dialogue by analyzing or
criticizing Molina’s narratives. But his interjections
provide another function: to let the reader know of
Valentin’s existence and his reactions to the films. The

interaction between Molina and Valentin provide the purpose

171
for continuing the text. ‘Valentin’s reactions to the movies
account for the continuing dialogue. Molina vies for
narrative control and a type of textual seduction for
Valentin as well as the reader by manipulating the film
recollections. He purposely omits details, only to return
to them at a later time which demands that the audience
re-think Molina’s narration: 'Y con la luz de los
candelabros el esta tocando algo un poco triste porque me
olvidé de decirte que ella esta llegando tarde a la cita'
(86). He shows another form of control by leaving his
audience in the dark:

Y lo que se oye ahora es el ruido de pisadas entre los

matorrales del parque pisadas de animal, que se
acercan.

---5Y?

---Mafiana seguimos. Chau, que duermas bien.

---Ya me las vas a pagar. (32)

By abandoning the narrative at his whims, Molina leaves the
“text' hanging, along with Valentin and the reader, thus
tempting all interested parties to maintain an eager
listening ear.

The text begins with the narration of 'The Panther
Woman,‘ through the detailed description of a beautiful
young lady, one that is derived from.a person well attuned
to feminine perspectives. The reader might assume that the
narrator is female. It is Valentin, not Molina who reveals
both only the identification of the narrator and also his

intentions to transcend the cell through his dream-world.

172

valentin keeps a watchful eye on the fine line between
reality and the imagination, not allowing Molina to tempt to
drag him into the world of fantasy:

--las piernas las tiene entrelazadas, los zapatos son

negros, de taco alto y grueso, sin puntera, se asoman

las ufias pintadas de oscuro. Las medias son brillosas,

ese tipo de malla cristal de seda, no se sabe si es

rosada la carne o la media.

--Perd6n pero acordate de lo que te dije, no hagas
descripciones eroticas. Sabés que no conviene (13).

In order to control the narration, the protagonists must
strive beyond their personal dialogue. Each must struggle
to maintain the role of storyteller, which seems to lie in
the hands of Molina. The film narrations belong to Molina’s
nostalgic recollections which he can offer to his audience
or refuse to provide full details. He plays the role of the
censor as well, editing and choosing the scenes as he wants
them played, or at least how he has remembered them. He
narrates the scenes as if he had witnessed their creation.
For example, in this first film narration, he knows that the
panther cannot smell the woman while she sketches near the
cage. For Molina, the films have replaced the realm of
dreams, thus accounting for his ability to incorporate all
of his senses into his film narrations. Molina also chooses
the 'modus operandi,' opting to relate his tales at night
while he and valentin are laying in their beds getting ready
to fall into the realm of dreams. He offers his stories by
installments to bait his audience for the next night. Yet
from the onset of the text, the struggle for narrative,

psychological and emotional control is evident.

173

Although Valentin shows a stoic fortitude to resist the
aesthetic pleasures of the movies, he finds himself seduced
by the narration of the panther woman who is cursed by her
ancestors: ';Estas loco), gY la pantera? Me dejaste en
suspenso desde anoche“ (34). As Masiello contends,
Valentin’s analysis does not stem from the same perspective
as Molina’s:

Puig contrasts Valentin’s critical analysis with

Molina’s sentimental evaluations of the films described

and allows for a series of metacritical alternatives

that span the field of possible literay
interpretations. Each character brings to the critical
act a priori assumptions about art. For Molina, the
screen universe is perfectly congruent with the
everyday world. Molina understands art as a mimetic

alternative to real life woes. (20)

Valentin sees the movie as 'una alegoria' (36) of the sexual
appetite between male and female. His venue for escape lies
in his books of politics and philosophy which he uses to
interpret Molina’s creations. Despite their different
criteria for artistic evaluation, the results remain the
same: they are both attracted to the film narration.
Valentin, unaware of his intrigue, begins to fall into
Molina’s trap.

Further baiting his cellmate, Molina employs another
form.of entrapment by contaminating his narration of movies
with facts from Valentin’s love life. Molina names
Valentin’s girlfriend after the character to whom Valentin
is attracted in the 'Panther Woman' movie:

--Yo ahora me acordé el nombre de la artista que hace

de arquitecta.
--aComo es?

174
--Jane Randolph.
--Nunca la oi nombrar.

—-Es de hace mucho, del cuarenta, por ahi. A tu
compafiera le podemos decir Jane Randolph.

--Jane Randolph.

--Jane Randolph en...El misterio de la celda siete.

--Una de las iniciales le va... (49)
Until the end of Chapter Two, which indicates the end of the
panther woman movie, Molina and Valentin refer to Valentin’s
girlfriend as Jane Randolph, subtly incorporating fiction
with reality. He later identifies with Jane Randolph as his
own girlfirend and as the one who is in danger, not the
arquitect. Valentin’s point of view may seem ironic since he
had been an arquitect before his arrest. Yet, Molina
further deceives Valentin by capturing his interest through
providing a role model for him, in a sense--a
psychoanalytical perspective. From the first film narration,
Molina offers bait to entrap Valentin’s intellectual or
political curiosity. The nameless (but 'obviously' evil)
psychiatrist attempts to critically solve the panther
woman’s dilemma, but in the end, causes her to turn to her
dark side and murder him, set off by the fateful kiss that
transformed her into the panther (much like the kiss between
Molina and Valentin which marks the prelude to Molina’s
death).

For Molina, the self-absorption and deception of all
his movie narrations is much more serious. The reader is

immediately aware of the careful attention Molina gives to

175

minute details that deal with sexual identification. His
contempt for the male is evident throughout the narration of
this first movie:

y la pantera la mira, es una pantera macho y no se sabe

si es para despedazarla, y después comerla, o si la

mira llevada por otro instinto mas feo todavia. (9)
As in all of his narrations, Molina never names his male
characters or provides detailed descriptions of the
protagonists. His rejection of male identity becomes
obvious through his film discourse. In this film, the lover
of the panther woman, whom she eventually marries, is
innocently victimized and is never praised by Molina for his
heroic efforts to allay her fears and cure her of her curse.

Rather, Molina portrays him as a person who needs to
mother someone. The other male character, the psychiatrist,
shows his desire to help the panther woman as secondary; his
first goal, as Molina recalls, is to have sexual relations
with her. Molina’s control of the narrative and subsequent
point of view is emphasized by the fact that the reader
never has the privilege of reading any actual dialogue
within the movie. Instead, the narrations are all presented
in the third person present tense as a re-run from.Molina’s
imagination. The women in the movies play a major role for
Molina, as both a tool for psychological self-identification
and for a device of entrapment. It is evident through his
narrations that Molina is obsessed with women. He pays
special attention to detail when it comes to describing

female characters, be it their clothes or the special

176

hair-do they sport. On the other hand, Molina is able to
suffer from.memory relapses at will, causing an ellipsis in
the narrative movement. Much to Valentin’s aggravation, he
insists that Molina recall the details to which Molina plays
dumb. He often leaves Valentin in suspense by omitting
details, or even worse, stopping the narration entirely at a
climactic moment. Molina knows that this is one way of
weaving his web a bit stronger. The conflation of text and
context provides the backdrop for Valentin’s opportunity to
confide in Molina about his 'compafiera,“ 'Jane Randolph' as
well as attempt to take narrative control: Hagamos una
cosa: cuando yo sienta que te pueda contar algo te lo voy a
contar con todo gusto. Pero no me lo pidas, yo solo te voy
a sacar el tema (53). Puig snatches away Valentin’s
stronghold by abruptly ending the chapter, only to open the
next with a new movie narration.

As time progresses, Molina continues to set his trap.
The following two chapters deal with a Nazi propaganda film
in which a young and beautiful French caberet singer, Leni
compromises her patriotic loyalty by falling in love with a
handsome German officer. She ends up a heroine, sacrificing
her life for the German officer and the Third Reich. This
is the perfect movie for Valentin and Molina, placing their
ideals, politics and love in opposing positions. Neither
can understand the other’s viewpoint:

--Es que la pelicula era divina, y para mi la pelicula

es lo que me importa, porque total mientras estoy acé

encerrado no puedo hacer otra cosa que pensar en cosas
11ndas, para no volverme loco, ano?... Contestame.

177

--aQué querés que te conteste?

--Qué me dejes un poco que me escape de la realidad,

para qué me voy a desesperar mas todavia? aQuerés que

me vuelva loco? Porque loca ya soy. (85)
Valentin warns Molina of the dangers of his complete escape
into his fabricated reality but Molina pays no attention.
He has become entrapped by the film he appears to narrate,
identifying himself with Leni, the heroine. This is
underlined by the sarcastic use of the feminine adjective in
his self-description, 'loca ya soy." To Molina, Leni
represents the epitome of feminism. She is beautiful,
intelligent, tender, and most of all, she is willing to
sacrifice her life for the sake of her lover. Although her
lover is an army official of the German enemy, she overlooks
their differences. However, an official of the 'maquis'
blackmails Leni to steal information for the French
underground and at the same time sways her into believing
that her lover’s ideals and beliefs are evil. When she
confronts Werner, he escorts her to the army’s secret
headquarters. It is there that he shows Leni the army’s
activities through documentary German film. Leni, like
Molina is convinced of a certain representation of reality
through the silver screen, which entraps both of them,
Through his identification with the weaker sex, Molina also
strives to show Valentin his submissiveness.

Molina’s identification with Leni also stems from.his
idealization of the perfect male lover, which is how he

envisions his waiter 'friend,' Gabriel, who like the

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characters in Molina’s narrations, is “un galan de
pelicula' (69), and unattainable since he is heterosexual
and happily married:

--aQué es ser hombre, para vos?

--Es muchas cosas, pero para mi...bueno, lo mas lindo

del hombre es eso, ser lindo, fuerte, pero sin hacer

alharaca de fuerza, y que va avanzando seguro. Que
camine seguro, como mi mozo, que hable sin miedo, que
sepa lo que quiere, adonda va, sin miedo de nada.

--Es una idealizacién, un tipo asi no existe. (69)
Valentin’s reaction reveals his vulnerability to pangs of
jealousy, which demonstrates to Molina that Valentin may be
suseptible to his amorous intentions. When Molina proposes
the same question to Valentin, the latter, more or less,
reproaches Molina in a protective manner: 'no dejarme
basurear por nadie...es no rebajar a nadie, con una orden,
con una propina' (70). His advice goes unheeded, by Molina
as well as by himself.

Valentin’s weakening becomes evident through the film
narrations and his reactions to them. Valentin is affected
by Molina’s hypersensitivity when Valentin hurts his
feelings. He cannot fathom Molina’s gullibility to the
false political ideals which the Nazi movie expresses. Upon
scolding Molina for this, he becomes crushed and begins to
cry. Valentin realizes that perhaps his political ideology
is not as important as he had thought. In fact, he falls a
bit deeper into Molina’s trap:

--Y contame un poco mas de la pelicula...

--Por que, ate aburre?

179

--No me gusta pero estoy intrigado. (85)

Valentin had offered little information previously about his
life, claiming that Molina would not know his world. Through
the movies, he reveals the details of the middle-class life
he had rejected and that he really is not much different
from.Molina. Both characters inwardly struggle for the need
to be accepted and nurtured. The Nazi film reveals not only
its superficiality but also the power of love that can
overcome any obstacle. It does not matter to Molina if the
movie doesn’t portray truth or reality, he is entrapped in
the only escape mechanism that helps him to forget his
physical confines: 'para mi la pelicula es lo que me
importa, porque total mientras estoy aca encerrado no puedo
hacer otra cosa que pensar en cosas lindas, para no volverme
loco' (85).

Valentin warns him that he can go crazy by 'alienafidote...
escapar asi es como una droga.' (85) Little does Valentin
realize that he has fallen for the same trap.

A turning point in the narrative is evident that shows
Molina’s contempt for Valentin’s criticism of his
sentimentality. His inward thoughts lash out at Valentin.

Along with it, the following dialogue reveals that Molina
is meeting with his lawyer to sign 'special' papers, which
in an isolated incident would not arouse any suspicion. A
few pages later, the beginnings of treachery from beyond the
cell invade the text. When the daily 'polenta' arrives,

Molina offers the larger plate to his cellmate knowing that

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it is tainted, but Valentin rejects it. Molina ends up
eating it so that Valentin will not suspect anything. The
final pages of the chapter reveal Molina sick and helpless.
Mereover, the scene shows Valentin’s reluctance to help him,
a trap which doubles back on the trickster; Valentin shows
that distance is a form.of control. He suggests that Molina
finish the film narration to keep his mind off of his
intestines.

The tables are turned when Molina successfully carries
out his mission to feed Valentin poisoned rice. Molina
combines his film narrations with Valentin’s illness to take
advantage of him. Valentin becomes dependent upon Molina
for both physical and emotional support, which did not occur
for Molina during his illness, making Valentin more
vulnerable to Molina’s web of deception. The movie he
narrates conveniently parallels valentin’s life. The mother
and father are divorced, the son is a drifter who seeks
financial support from his father. It seems that the mother,
a plantation owner on a tropical island, is the innocent
victim of oppressive political dealings. The details of the
family reflect Valentin’s life which alienates him more than
he already is. Ironically the female heroine, who
represents a maternal idol for Molina, turns out to be the
true betrayer and is executed in the end. The young male
protagonist realizes that he had set up the death of his
mother by allowing a group of revolutionaries dictate his

life. The reader at this point may not realize the

181
connection, but this, of course parallels Molina’s final
demise.

To keep Valentin firmly in his grasp, Molina baits him
with another horror film, Molina has chosen this movie
because Valentin admits to him.how much he liked the same
type of story in the panther woman movie:

--5No te acordas de ninguna del tipo de la mujer
pantera? Esa fue la que mas me gusto.

--Bueno, asi fantasticas hay muchas.

--A ver, deci acuales?

--Bueno, ... Dracula, El hombre lobo...

--aQué otras?

--La vuelta de la mujer zombi...

--;Esa! A esa nunca la vi. (163)
The narration of 'Vuelta de la mujer zombi' through chapters
nine and ten is significant in other ways as well. Molina is
aware that Valentin is attracted to horror movies, but he
may not realize the ramifications of this particular
inclination. Puig’s deformation of 'I Walked with a Zombie'
fits the other film narrations, following the tragic plot
line that emphasizes the suffering femme fatale.8 In
Puig’s version, the heroic actions revolve around two women,
one who comes to a tropical island from the United States in
order to marry a plantation owner. The other, the
plantation owner’s first wife, appears as a zombie like the
other workers of the plantation. While the weak husband
pines over his dead first wife, drinking himself into a

stupor every night, his new wife confides in the witch

182
doctor to find a cure. The movie culminates with the zombie
killing the husband and setting fire to the zombie huts,
thus liberating the oppressed inhabitants of the island. The
movie follows Molina’s ideals as well as his situation. As
with his other narrations, he identifies with the female,
opposing the male authority figure. In this film, the
relationship leads to marriage, which underscores Molina’s
constant preoccupation with his sexuality and resulting
alienation from.“normal' society. Valentin’s situation is
emphasized as well, representing a weak male figure. He has
become a zombie in a sense, poisoned by the prison food and
completely dependent upon Molina’s care. Stephanie Merrim
stresses that his vulnerability exposes his bourgeois family
origins, hidden emotions and tastes. Even more important, he
confesses that he loves, not his comrade in revolution, the
middle class Marta, thereby framing a love triangle between
a 'healthy' woman and a political 'zombie,' who nonetheless
(as did the first wife) retains his affections. (307)
Valentin has completely transformed his image from strong,
stoic political revolutionary into a weak, emotional
bourgeios male who, like the husband in the movie, does not
have the power to liberate the oppressed by his own will.
Valentin has implicitly invited Molina to become part of the
love triangle with 'both the caretaker and victor which will
allow him.to become Molina’s lover” (Merrim, 307). Molina is
not finished with his plans of entrapment. As a final film

narration, he chooses one that he would enjoy telling

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instead of consulting valentin. This film takes place in
vera Cruz and Mexico City where a handsome young man meets a
breathtakingly beautiful woman at a masked ball. Their
relationship seems to have the ideal future, but as in all
of Molina’s films, the utopian dream shall soon end. The
rich heroine cannot commit herself to her lover for she is
chained to an oppressive marriage to a controlling husband
‘with Mafia type affiliations.9 The former nightclub singer
attempts to stage a comeback but her husband manages to have
the club closed down at her debut. At the same time she
cannot ignore her love for the faithful journalist. He saves
her reputation by smearing ink over a slanderous article
that was about to go to press. The loss of his job
results from.his heroic actions, thus the nameless young
hero turns to bouts of heavy drinking while writing lyrics
in the bar for his lover to one day sing. His health fails
and from his hospital bed, he calls her name. When she is
found, she had managed to escape the clutches of her
husband. She vows to save her lover, and in order to do so
she must prostitute herself to pay for his hospital bill.
When he discovers that she was not singing to support him,
he leaves her so that she would not have to sacrifice
herself. Molina’s choice of film parallels with his own
situation; he too has prostituted himself for the prison
warden. He sees himself as the selfless heroine, and
Valentin, the sick lover. As much as Valentin attempts to

control his resistance, he inevitably falls into the trap of

184
sentimentality and admits to Molina its appropriateness to
their own situation. The ending mirrors all of the films in
its tragedy. However, this movie ends as the novel will,
with the death of one of the lovers. The journalist dies as
the heroine once again finds him in a hospital. She knows
that he will always be with her, if only in memory of his
songs. Molina focuses on the final frame: a close-up of the
heroine’s face reveals a smile while tears stream down her
face. Valentin is intrigued for he feels that it is better
to have loved and lost, which he relates to his own
situation ('Te voy a extrafiar, Molinita' 263.) Molina’s
perspective runs deeper. He cannot accept the 'fin
enigmatico' (263).

The disparate voices created by Molina’s narrations
establish the enigmatic tone of the text that Molina has
just labeled in his final movie recollection. Both Molina
and Valentin develop through the film narrations and their
reactions to them. However, another narrative voice
contributes not only to their character development, but
also to the premises of entrapment and alienation.

VOICES FROM WITHIN

The introduction of another narrative technique in the
text serves as a distancing device for the reader, shifting
focus to yet another convention. The use of interior
monologue in El beso de la mujer arafia mirrors the cinematic
narrative, yet it serves to alienate and entrap character

and reader. On one hand, interior monologue expresses the

185
innermost thoughts of the characters, closing them off from
the other fictive entities and the inside world of the cell.
The reader has the privilege to be the sole spectator,
placed inside the four prison walls, and more specifically,
inside the character’s mind. Moreover, the interior
monologue alienates the character from reality and entraps
him.in his created world. The reader must jump back and
forth from several planes--from the cinematic narration, to
dialogue, to interior monologues of Molina and Valentin.
The boundaries between fantasy and reality, narrative
control and entrapment are constantly redefined while
exposing possible readings.

Molina’s interior monologue in chapter five shows the
link between private thought and film discourse, both which
proves his entrapment and dependence upon the cinematic
world. In this instance, Puig invites the reader to view
Molina’s thoughts as privileged information, that which
cannot be contaminated by Valentin’s interruptions. Molina
offers a version of 'The Enchanted Cottage' through
stream-of-consciousness ramblings. In this movie Molina
lets his imagination blend in with the real because he does
not have anyone to criticize him, While Valentin is
'transcending the cell' through his books on Marxist theory,
Molina is escaping reality within his mind. Molina chooses
to reiterate this movie in the form of interior monologue to
closes himself off from the rest of his small world, which

allows Molina to alienate himself from reality, the cell and

 

186
Valentin.

For Molina this movie is special, and as a form.of
narration it shows its distinctions. The recollection of
the movie is a direct, 'pure' reflection of Molina, unedited
for an audience, but it seems to be a narration that takes
several twists and turns. On one level, the narration is an
intrusion of Molina’s private thoughts, but on another it
serves as a meta-narration where Molina acts as both
narrator, interpreter, and interlocutor.10 In one sense he
and the reader are doubly distanced from the narration.

Molina chooses a film that has an omniscient narrator
to tell the story taking place, one that focuses on other
characters. Moreover, the narrator is a blind man who
relates the details from an internalized perspective, much
like the stream-of-consciousness narration presented in
Molina’s mind.

The narrator explains the metamorphoses that are taking
place within the movie. The ugly couple transforms into the
beautiful through, ironically as the blind narrator states,
'the glow of the eyes' (109). The heroic fighter pilot who
brings his fiancé to the cottage to plan their honeymoon
becomes horribly scarred before the event can be carried
out. After the breakup of his relationship he arrives alone
to become a recluse, and a transformation takes place where
he and the ugly servant girl of the enchanted cottage see
beyond their deformities. The love between the nameless

homely couple is invincible, their beauty indestructible

187

until reality shatters the created image. This narrative is
self-reflexive not just in the sense that Molina narrates it
to himself but also that the movie is a direct
representation of his inner being. He sees himself like the
servant girl who is not what she appears to be, capable of
being loved if one could overlook the external appearances.
However, as Echavarren points out, ”the servant girl is NOT
beautiful, and Molina is NOT a woman.“11 This becomes
clear in the middle of the narrative when the movie
transforms into a vision of Gabriel. Again, the description
of the eyes stand out: "tabaco negro, la mirada triste
perdida a lo lejos...“ (113). Molina cannot distinguish
reality at this point:

y si me muero antes de salir de esta carcel no voy a

saber qué gusto tiene la saliva de él aqué paso esa

noche? Al despertar e1 miedo de que fuera un suefio...

(113).
As reality eventually comes back into view, so does
Valentin. Molina fears that some sarcastic criticism may
ooze into his movie, and thus his existence, so he silently
lashes out at Valentin and then sets his bait by serving
Valentin the poisoned rice. Like Molina, Valentin has fallen
in the same trap, completely taken in by the narrations of
films. Valentin’s thoughts are invaded by the ideals,
themes and language of the narrative. His interior
monologues appear interspersed among dialogue and film
narration that both reflect and imitate the discourse of the
prison cell. Valentin’s version attempts to follow the pop

culture pattern and the result is an obvious imitation:

188

una mujer europea, una mujer inteligente, una mujer
hermosa, una mujer educada, una mujer con conocimientos
de politica internacional, ...un muchacho que muchacho
que recuerda peones encarcelados por robar el pan que
no podian comprar y que recuerda peones alcoholizados
para olvidar después su humillacion, muchacho que cree
sin vacilar en la doctrina marxista... (128-129)

Valentin’s struggle with his own identity infuses the play
between film narration, dialogue, and interior monologue.

In both the narration of the “zombie-woman“ movie and the
dialogue between Valentin and Molina appear dream-like
illusions in the imaginations of the two prisoners. Neither
one realizes what the other is thinking, it is in the
reader’s hands to sort and interpret. The problem with the
dreams is that they are incoherent, yet reminiscent of
Molina’s movie recollections. Here the reader must
interpret the metaphoric symbols. Valentin’s dream.is

filled with guilt and remorse:

Valentin also dreams his own film scripts, revising one
of Molina’s described movies to forge a lyric yet
grotesque vision of his ideological conflicts. The
dream takes a form.of reiterative litany, an exorcism
of sorts articulating the character’s guilt and
confusion. At the end of that dream, he announces his
desires for a traditional, uncomplicated love and in
this sense, begins to share Molina’s fondest illusions
(Masiello, 19).
valentin’s dream.is ironically shadowed by the zombie woman
movie, dealing with creatures that have lost their own will
and are controlled by others, affirming to himself the
futility of his situation: he is locked up in prison,
losing his will to the system after being drugged, and
little by little becoming Molina’s 'zombie'.

On the other hand, Molina’s dream is a symbolic tribute
to his selfless dedication to helping Valentin, yet he is
still a bit apprehensive of Valentin’s intentions:

...la pobre enfermera, no tiene suerte, le dan el

enfermo mas grave y no sabe que hacer para que esa
noche no muera o la mate, mas fuerte que nunca e1 peligro a1
contagio... (177)

la enfermera tiembla, e1 enfermo la mira, ale pide

189

morfina?, ale pide caricias? go quiere que el
contagiosa fulminante y mortal? (181)

By revealing his preoccupations, Molina becomes just as
vulnerable as Valentin is to him.

The movies and dueling monologues converge along with
the thoughts, ideals and emotions of Valentin and Molina.
They consummate their relationship, but not before Molina
once again visits the 'Director' to finalize plans for early
parole, that is if Molina can get Valentin to confide
political details to him. It seems that Molina has
succeeded in entrapping Valentin. Ironically valentin has
deceived Molina as well by becoming the possessor of his
emotions and the image of the ideal man that he has sought
through his movie narrations. Both characters have
transcended their images, their monologues, and the cell:
'Es como si estuviéramos en una isla desierta. Una isla en
la que tal vez estemos solos afios. Porque, 5i, fuera de la
celda estan nuestros opresores, pero adentro no' (206). A
complete transformation has taken place; Molina and Valentin
no longer stand at opposite poles:

--Por un minuto 5610, me parecio que yo no estaba
aca,...ni aca,...ni afuera...

--Me parecio que yo no estaba...que estabas vos 5610.
--O que yo no era yo. Que ahora yo...eras vos. (222)
Their final dialogue discloses the web of deception:

(Valentin): 'Vos 505 la mujer arafla, que atrapa a los

190

--Me parecio que yo no estaba...que estabas vos 5610.

--O que yo no era yo. Que ahora yo...eras vos. (222)
Their final dialogue discloses the web of deception:
(Valentin): 'Vos 505 la mujer arafia, que atrapa a los
hombres en su tela.' (Molina) 'iQué lindo! Eso si me
gusta.' (265) Molina’s fate is sealed with the kiss which
he requests from Valentin. Just like the panther woman in
the first recounted film, the kiss leads to the death of the
protagonist. Moreover, Molina’s symbolism leads to

Valentin’s final interior monologue that finishes the novel.

Valentin appears in a morphine-induced stupor after
enduring a torture session. The details of the scene are at
best hazy, identical to the dream-like monologue that
indtates Molina’s style of narration. The reader is left to
ponder Valentin’s own 'fin enigmatico.' Critics disagree on
his whereabouts or destiny. Some attest that he dies in
prison whereas others believe he has escaped and his
comrades are left to care for him.12 The purpose of
valentin’s last appearance compares to the text itself. The
scene seems to focus on a specific character, yet the true
nexus underlies it.

Valentin’s monologue serves not so much to explain his
final demise, rather, he justifies Molina’s death, claiming
that he died as he would have wanted, like a heroine in one

of his films. Valentin also seems to be caught up in

191

Molina’s world, finding himself in a movie-setting. He sees
himself on a tropical island, and although it may seem that
he has transcended his boundaries, the refuge is no
different than the cell in which he was entrapped--he cannot
escape the marginality imposed upon him. Also, Valentin
envisions Marta, his true love, on the island with whom he
has a dialogue. However, he is still bound to Molina’s
imageé 'Marta, no te podés imaginar qué ganas tengo de
dormir después de comer todo lo que me encontré gracias a la
mujer-arafia' (286). His dream ends as does the novel: 'este
sueflo es corto pero es feliz' (287). The reader must deal
with an incoherent narration that marks the text with an
uncertainty that leaves it open to interpretation, yet
closing the text by neatly tying together interior
monologue, dialogue, and film narration. The reader must
also wonder if he is the greatest victim in Puig’s web of
deception.

SCRIPT FROM BEYOND THE MARGINS

The chapter that precedes valentin’s monologue sharply

contrasts with the personal, private atmosphere. Molina’s
character is developed through the narrative device of the
movies; another distanced technique reveals his demise--his
death is presented by an impersonal narrative form: a
sterile, objective police report, which not only reveals the
details of his demise, but also alludes to the fact that
Molina’s life was much less valuable to the government than

the possibility of extinguishing valentin’s political

192
activities. By observing Molina’s actions, it seems that he
was aware that he was being followed and that his phone was
tapped. Yet, Molina attends the meeting arranged by
valentin and is mercilessly gunned down by extremists, more
than likely so that Molina would not have a chance to
confess. The formality of the document by a nameless
spectator distances the reader from the relationship built
by the rest of the text, posing an anti-climactic atmosphere
which leads the reader to the final and perplexing chapter
and a parallel to Valentin’s 'fin enigmatico.'
SCRIPT AND CONTROL FROM BEYOND THE MARGINS

The framing story of the text is shattered by another
narrative form, that of Freudian psychoanalytic explanations
of homosexuality. It appears in the form of footnoting
which situates the reader on a separate plane from.the
narrative. The authorial figure has set the reader apart
from.the characters also, giving the reader the privilege of
intertextual interpretation and a form of alienation from
the text.

To obfuscate the task of interpretation, the reader is
offered another 'text' below that both complements the
reading of the text above and attempts to subvert it.
Several interruptions of footnoting appear at the bottom of
the text with its weight curiously placed in the middle
chapters.13 This dialogue with the reader appears well
after he has become involved in the reading. The abrupt

introduction of a new text questions not only the thematic

 

193
text, which is generally reserved for non-fiction:
Like introductions or critical prefaces, appendixes or
afterwords, they are inherently marginal, not
incorporated into the text but appended to it. As
annotations, they are innately referential as well,
reflecting on the text, engaged in dialogue with it,
and often performing an interpretive and critical act
on it, While also addressing a larger, extratextual
world in an effort to relate this text to other texts,
to negotiate the middle ground between this author and
other authors, between this author and the reader.“
Therefore footnoting addresses both the text, the author,
and the reader. Benstock asserts that footnotes can reflect
ambivalance as well, 'toward the text, toward the speaker in
the text, and toward the audience (204). The discourse
created by foonotes is both inner-directed as well as
outer-directed which offers a myriad of critical
assumptions. In other words, it comments on the text above,
yet it stands as its own text. But the primary purpose of
foonoting is to engage a critical study of the text above
without subverting it.

Within fiction, footnoting takes on other
possibilities. As a critical tool, it comments upon itself,
its sources and the traditions within which it falls.
Footnoting transcends the critical boundaries into the
creative realm, even, as we see in El beso de la mujer
arafia, when it 'cites real sources outside fiction'
(Benstock, 205). The function of footnoting, which generally
serves to clarify the text above, seems to serve an opposite
role within fictional writing. The footnotes become an

inherent part of the fiction, although they may emphasize

the distance between reader, subject, text and author. Thus

194
the notes force the reader to resolve the gaps by searching
for the authorial presence that is offered. Roberto Gonzalez
Echevarria suggests that the author of the text (and in
this case, the footnotes) is much like the figure of the
Latin American dictator, who reveals himself as a source of
power and control. He contends that in the twentieth century
Latin American novel, the figure of the author has been
replaced by the uncertain figure of the writer. There is no
mediation between the traditional third person narrator and
powerful author. Thus, the 'scriptor' fills the void of a
center of power, the absence of the concept of self. One
way to minimize the void is through the presence of
authorial figure who, if he cannot control, he can present
the facade, in this case through the technique of
footnoting. In El beso, the margins of the text reflect the
the polemic of author and writer. As valentin displays his
authority in the political and philosophical realm, he opens
the invitation for the participation of an outside voice,
here in the form of footnoting. As Valentin attempts to
educate the naive Molina, valentin admits his ignorance
regarding homosexuality: '...yo de gente de tus
inclinaciones sé muy poco“ (66). Valentin’s authority and
control is swiftly effaced by both the characters within the
text as well as by the author. valentin’s ignorance invites
the reader to not only see valentin’s weaknesses but to also
place him on the same level of the reader. By using

footnotes to explain 'homosexuality', it also points to the

195
regarding homosexuality: '...yo de gente de tus
inclinaciones sé muy poco' (66). Valentin’s authority and
control is swiftly effaced by both the characters within the
text as well as by the author. Valentin’s ignorance invites
the reader to not only see Valentin’s weaknesses but to also
place him.on the same level of the reader. By using
footnotes to explain 'homosexuality', it also points to the
reader’s ignorance of the subject and his alienation of an
unacceptable, marginalized aspect of society. Valentin’s
admittance of ignorance initiates the footnoting on the
theories of homosexuality. Thus, the author presents himself
as the spokesperson for several authors, those which stem
from the extra-textual world. Theories ranging from
psychological, social, anthropological and physical sources
attempt to explain the origins and nature of homosexuality.
Familiar names such as Freud, Marcuse and Brown accompany
these theories which seem to accredit their feasibility
within the fiction. Each footnote discusses a reason for
homosexuality, beginning with physical possibilities and
ending with social and anthropological reasons within modern
culture. The weight of the notes lies on psychoanalysis
which seems to parallel valentin’s train of thought.
However, the last footnote further binds him.to Molina’s
identity, entrapping him in a category from which his image
cannot escape. It emphasizes the theory that homosexuality
is political, that is, homosexuality is a revolutionary

practice. Thus, the marginal notes not only solidify the

196
thematic bond between Molina and Valentin, but also support
the discourse that runs through the text.

The notes on homosexuality allow the authorial figure
to make an appearance that confirms his presence as well as
a facade of his control. He enters the text masked as a
fictional entity. A non-existent Dr. Anneli Taube, a
psychoanalyst who speculates through her work, Sexualidad y
revolucién, that the homosexual is actually a nonconformist
revolutionary. Lucille Kerr asserts that Dr. Taube also
"postulates the ultimate liberation of both homosexual and
heterosexual relationships from the bourgeois paradigm of
oppression and sumission." (Kerr, 225) The authorial figure
has not only managed to converge the main text and the one
below through his neatly theorized hypothesis, but also has
placed himself among the other authorial figures from the
extra-literary world. More curiously, he, like the
characters in the main text has masked his identity,
alienating himself from the rest. He appears in the guise
of another gender, representing an ambiguous identity.
Authorial control appears in another set of footnotes that
serve as an addendum.to Molina’s narrative of the 'Nazi
filnfl and acts as an interruption to the 'scientific' notes
on homosexuality. This abrupt shift connects Molina’s
fiction with the propaganda 'fiction' of World War Two. The
note, 'Servicio publicitario de los estudios Tobis-Berlin,
destinado a los exhibidores internacionales de sus

peliculas, referente a la superproduccién ’Destino’,' leads

 

197

the reader to believe its historical reality by the quotes
offered by Hitler and Goebbels. The documentary nature of
constitutes, in a sense, a variety of discourses that
contrasts with the film narrated by Molina, who as Kerr
points out 'is himself a fictional character whose discourse
is invented by another author" (Kerr, 223). The note offers
details about the actress who plays Leni and about the time
she spends in Berlin with her lover. The note parallels
Molina’s narration of the film. Thus the note goes beyond
Molina’s recollection, and at the same time, is reflected
through its similar discourse. Authorial play between
fiction and footnote supports and undercuts the discourses
created through it. An authorial figure appears in a text
that distracts, yet invites the reader to further explore
the discursive and thematic possibilites of the fiction.
However, through the margins of discourse, authorial control
posits a clever game of hide and seek with the reader,
subject, audience and author. In its midst, this evasive
voice exposes the possibility of true liberation of the
sexually and politically oppressed.
CONCLUSION

As a mirror of contemporary Latin American society,,§l
beso de la mujer arana employs the element of repression on
a political, thematic, narrative, authorial and structural
level that binds the text. Puig’s fourth novel disseminates
the struggle for power and control on various levels of

reading, not only for what is unearthed, but also for the

 

198
textual elements that are repressed.

The structure of the text is deceptive, not for its
elusiveness, rather for its chaotic imbalance that lies
underneath. On the one hand, Molina and Valentin benefit
from.the chronological formal structure, slowly weaving
their private web of deception and entrapment. Neither
seems to be aware of the other’s plans; it is up to the
reader to decode each level of intrigue. On the other hand,
Molina’s masked film recollections first appear to be the
narrative focus of the text. As the text progresses,
dialogue and cinematic narration exchange roles, the former
takes precedence and the latter becomes a framing device.
Narrative conventions play a decisive role in the (re)
writing of El beso. The overwhelming voice is played by the
pop culture product of Grade B movies of the 19305 and
19405. The controlling voice seems to belong to Molina, who
narrates the majority of the text, and controls its
direction. However, the narrations truly belong to another
realm that has been infused with Molina’s character. The
pop culture product of Grade B films not only narrates its
own story but also becomes part of Molina and Valentin’s
tales. Its themes, values and linguistic quirks become part
of their life, personality, and character. Film and dialogue
interweave, resulting in varying narrative, thematic and
generic strategies which unmask underlying possible readings
of the text. Molina’s film serves as the primary focus of

the text, although no indication is made that the text is

 

199
actually a film recollection. However, the interspersion of
cinema and dialogue result in a transformation where film
becomes a frame and the resulting discourse acts as the
focus. Yet the function of film as a narrative, thematic
and generic device cannot be overshadowed. It not only
serves as an opiate for the protagonists, but also
potentially entraps the reader who, like Molina and Valentin
interpret through identification. In other words, the
reader can easily be deceived through the (mis)cues that
link the extra-literary world established by the pop culture
products in the text. In other instances, other distancing
narrative devices play the role of character voice, stealing
glimpses of Molina, Valentin and surrounding life through
narrative techniques, such as the script-dialogue between
'Director y procesado', the police report, and the
pseudo-cinematic interior monologues. The shifting or
absence of the authorial voice comes to the forefront in E;
beso de la mujer arafia. Molina seems to take the reins as
the creative force through his film recollections, and the
authorial voice snatches them away through various
discursive and narrative ploys. The authorial voice appears
through the miniscule footnoting that infuses him in both
the fictional and non-fictional worlds, placing him among
the world’s most famous psychologists and authors. Yet, for
all the continual deviations, the voice of authority seems

to rest within the various discourses that result from.them.

 

200

The reader must shift the focus from the main text to
what awaits below. The footnotes on the latter plane force
the reader to the margins of the text, distancing him from
the text above. He must perform.two tasks simultaneously,
interpreting two distinct texts and at the same time
juxtaposing and comparing them. Therefore, he must deal with
at least two separate discourses, not to mention those which
result from the text and footnotes combined. The potential
for the footnotes--a literary technique generally reserved
for non-fiction--to contradict or even subvert the text
becomes a possibility, especially when one considers the
authorial play that has been bestowed upon the text and
audience. Thus, the reading of the text seems to lie in the
hands of the reader who must actively participate in the

creation of the text. However, the reader must ponder--is he

another victim of the great web of deception?

 

NOTES

1. Between Bogpitas pintadas and El beso de la mujer
arafia, Puig published The Buenos Aires Affair in 1973.

2. Unlike the chronology, the time frame is offered
implicitly. The former date is given through a dialogue with
the warden in chapter eight, the latter provided in a police
document in chapter fifteen.

V

3. Puig has included six recollections of films in the
text, five of which are based on actual Hollywood movies.
They are as follows: 'Cat People“ dir. Jacques Tourneur,
(1942); the invented Nazi propaganda film called 'Destino:'
'The Enchanted Cottage,' dir. John Cromwell (1946), the
“Adventure Film' (a complete invention by Puig); '1 Walked
with a Zombie,' dir Jacques Tourneur (1943); and 'Mexican
filnfl.

!.

4. For specific examples, see Pamela Bacarisse, 'The
Projection of Peronism.in the Novels of Manuel Puig,' 2mg
Historical Novel in Latin America: A Symposium, ed. Daniel
Balderston, (Gaithersburg, MD: Ediciones Hispamérica, 1986),
185-201.

5. Juan Manuel Garcia Ramos, La narrativa de Manuel
Puig, Coleccion Monografias,. 16 (La Laguna: Secretariado de
Publicaciones de la Universidad de La Laguna, 1982): 378.

6. Pamela Bacarisse, The Necessapy Dream: A Study of the
Novels of Manuel Puig (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1988),

89-90.

7. See Gustavo Pellon, “Manuel Puig’s contradictory
strategy: Kitsch Paradigms versus Paradigmatic Structure in
El beso de la mujer arafia and Pubis angelical,“ Symposium
37.3 (1983): 186-201. He supports that "kitsch is art that
follows established rules at a time when all rules in art are
put into question by each artist (186). Also see Jonathan
Tittler, 'Order, Chaos, and Re-Order: The Novels of Manuel

Puig,' Kentucky Romance Quarterly 30.2, (1983), 187-201.

8. For a comparison between Val Lewton’s 'I Walked with
a Zombie' and Puig’s "La vuelta de la mujer zombie,' see
Stephanie Merrim, 'Through the Film.Darkly: Grade '3' Movies
and Dreamwork in Tres tristes pigres and El beso de la mujer
arafia,' Modern Language Studies 5.4 (1985), 300-312.

201

9. Pamela Bacarisse notes that the heroine of this last
movie is 'like so many other people in El beso de la mujer
arafia and elsewhere in Puig, kept a prisoner' (123).

 

10. Pamela Bacarisse refers to Molina’s version of 'The
Enchanted Cottage' as a meta-meta-narration where 'Puig
narrates the tale of Molina, who narrates the tale of a blind
man, who narrates the thoughts of the servant-girl, who is a
reflection of the second narrator, Molina' (109).

11. 'El beso de la mujer arafia y las metaforas del
sujeto,” Revista Iberoamericana 102 (1978): 79.

12. For differing opinions about Valentin’s final
demise, see Lucille Kerr, Suspended Fictions: Reading Novels
py Manuel Puig, (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1987); Stephanie
Merrim, and Gustavo Pellén.

13. Footnotes appear in chapter three (66—68), chapter
four (88-94), chapter five (102-103), chapter six (133-135),
chapter seven (141-143), chapter eight (154-155), chapter
nine (168-171), chapter ten (199-200), and chapter eleven
(209-211).

14. 'At the Margin of Discourse: Footnotes in the
Fictional Text,' PMLA 98 (1983): 204.

202

 

SANGRE DE AMOR CORRESPONDIDO:
A DISPUTE OF CREATION

A recurrent characteristic of Manuel Puig’s novels is
expressed through the lives of his characters who struggle
to survive the backlash of the stifling and repressive
society of Argentina. Although no overt historical events
are mentioned in his works, the social, political, and
personal ramifications of the Peron regimes and afterward
are reflected through the attitudes, values, and ideals of
Puig’s characters. For example, Toto in La traicién de Rita
Hayyorth masks his entrapment in a dull, meaningless
existence through the complete immersion in the fantasy
world that stems from the glitter of pop culture. Inigl
beso de la mujer arafla, the protagonists, Molina and
valentin transcend the physical barriers of their prison
cell that the repressive government has imposed on them by
living through Grade B movies. In Puig’s novels, the
characters share the same demise. They are unable to escape
the entrapment and alienation that society has created and
that which the characters have unwittingly constructed as
well in their attempt to mask or escape their predicament.

Puig’s penultimate novel, Sangre de amor correspondido
(1982) also reflects these models of repression. But in this
work, the focus sways toward a different direction. His

203

previous novels all take place in the encumbering atmosphere
of urban sprawl where the characters are anonymous entities
among the population. Even in the case of La traicion de
Rita Haymorth where the Casals family is isolated in the
small town of Coronel Vallejos, they cannot seem to identify
with or function in the limits of the “pueblo." Their
existence remains tied to the repressive urban atmosphere of
Buenos Aires where they had lived most of their lives.
Puig’s first novels, La traicion de Rita Haymorth, Bogpitas

pintadas, and El beso de la mujer arafia take place in Buenos
Aires. The following three, Pubis angelical, Maldicién

eterna a gpien lea estas paginas, and Cae la noche tropical
shift to outside of Argentina, yet remain within the chaotic
confines of urban areas (They take place in Mexico City,
Washington, D.C., and Rio de Janeiro, respectively). All of
these novels point to the characters’ eternal chastisement
for the life they had lead in their native Argentina. Sangre
de amor correspondido not only abandons the setting of
Argentina, but also the overpowering urban sprawl of its
largest city. Instead, the novel takes place in the poverty
stricken rural areas of contemporary Brazil, shifting the
focus from the crowded city to individual destitution. The
change of focus is not merely geographic. As Puig’s novels
have progressed, so has the complexity of formal structure,
narrative technique, and authorial voice. This chapter will
focus on these conventions and how they entrap and alienate
both characters and reader, emphasizing the novel’s

204

2_§
narrative technique, and authorial voice. This chapter will
focus on these conventions and how they entrap and alienate
both characters and reader, emphasizing the novel’s
framework of social repression that deceptively binds the
text to create a cohesive whole.
Puig’s previous works are presented through various

narrative forms, taking advantage of interior monologue, t—

dialogue, footnotes, letters, and various conventions of

 

l1

popular culture (such as Grade B films, movie scripts, radio
broadcasts and the tango). For example, in La traicién de
Rita Haymorth and El beso de la mujer arafia, Grade B films
speak through the characters, and in many instances, serve
as actual narrators that blend in with their own marginal
voices. By the end of the novels, the fragmented
presentation of the text seems to fit together to form.not a
coherent whole, as the reader may wish to discover, but
rather the final result is a multiple exposure that uncovers
the possible texts that lay underneath as the reader
participates in its (re)creation. Sangre de amor
correspondido offers a new twist to Puig’s jumbled creation
made up of cues from seemingly distorted planes: convoluted
spacial and temporal frames with mismatching voices. Sangre
de amor correspondido offers a portrait of a young, poor
stonecutter, Josemar, who relates his uneventful
auto-biography through a twisted, and at times
unintelligible interior monologue. The presentation of his

story parallels his life that consists of a never-ending

m;
tale that journeys from place to place, along with his short
term employment throughout small Brazilian towns such as
Bauru, Santisimo and Cocota. He tells his story as he rides
the two hour journey from Santisimo, where he lives with his
111 mother, to work in Rio. The novel does not explicitly
reveal the temporal or spacial planes of his narrations; the
reader must piece the narrative clues together as the text
progresses. Josemar confesses that his 31 years
have not produced much in life, which stems from his
experiences in Cocota. His stay there is unclear. He
claims that he lived in Cocota ten years ago, and in other
instances he says that he was eighteen years old when he
abandoned the town. Originally Josemar’s family lived
outside of Cocota on the 'chacra,' alienated from the town
and its social advantages as well. But as a young child,
Josemar went to live with an aunt in Rio to escape his
violent father, isolated from his ture family during his
developmental years. Upon his return to Cocota as a sixteen
year-old.young man, he meets Maria da Gloria. Josemar is
obsessed with her and everything she symbolizes. Although
when they meet, she is only twelve years-old and from.a
higher social class, her mother permits that they have a
relationship. The details and consequences of their affair
constitute the focus of Josemar’s monologue. It seems that
he had deflowered Maria da Gloria and later abandoned her,
supposedly which led to her insanity. His story is imbued

with his sexual escapades with other women, enhanced by his

 

;_1
attempt to fulfill the macho self-image dictated by society.
Josemar claims that he left Cocota in hopes of a better
future, but underneath that facade, his ramblings reveal his
poor family life due to his drunken father who beat the
mother he adored, and Josesmar’s failure to acheive any kind
of success in life. The end of the novel returns to its
beginning, and through the process, exposes the possible
underlying readings through Josemar’s dialectic between
truth and reality and his version of them, The voices
created within Josemar’s mind provide the facade of
narrative control. Moreover, it seems that Josemar also
holds the reins of authorial voice. Because of the delicate
balance between authorial and narrative voice, both must be
considered within the text. Josemar’s role as an authorial
subject is credible. The term 'author' in this case does not
solely refer to Manuel Puig, who stands above and beyond the
text. One must consider the fictionalized characters within
the novel who take on the responsibility of authorial
subjects as well. Josemar’s stories can be considered as a
stream-of consciousness that appears to the reader in
written form, This can easily account for the sudden shift
in versions and subject change, as well as the lack of
veracity when compared to previous stories that he has
presented earlier in the text. Josemar’s accounts are based
upon memories that serve, as Jesus Lazaro points out, as 'el
escape a1 pasado por el peso del presente."1 In this

light, Josemar mirrors Maria da Gloria. Neither are able to

 

gg_
remember the pertinent details of the night when Josemar
deflowered Maria or the stories that revolve around their
alleged turbulent relationship. The key difference between
Maria da Gloria and Josemar, however, is that Josemar’s
invention, his very essence, is based upon an event, an
existence that may have never been given life. It seems
that Josemar constantly recreates and relives the stories
within his mind, similar to a dream text where he fills in
the missing details where his memory has failed him.

The elusive quality of Josemar’s monologue creates the
facade of authorial and narrative control which he cannot
master. Rather, his attempts to manipulate the text are
contradicted and undermined by his own hand. The continual
shift of temporal and spacial planes further contributes to
the potential deception of the novel. The analysis of each
of these components exposes the undercurrent of alienation
and entrapment in Sangre de amor correspondido.

ELUSIVE FORMAL STRUCTURE
The search for reality on a spiraling continuum of

shifting temporal and spacial planes provides the
structural foundation of the text. True to Puigian form,
Sangre de amor correspondido reveals information bit by bit,
omitting details and key referents. The reader must follow
Josemar’s subconscious journey through time and space that
constantly halts and shifts without warning. Another
departure from Puig’s other novels also contributes to a

change in strategies. Instead of the typical sixteen

292
chapters divided into two symmetrical halves, this novel
contains twelve chapters and an epilogue that leads back to
the beginning of the text by almost exact repetition.
Repetitiveness runs throughout the novel, constantly jumping
back and forth between the present, past and future, taking
a significant form, Pamela Bacarrise points out that
Josemar "uses the same phrases over and over again and he
tells the same story more than once."2 Josemar not only
must search for the story in his mind, he must rewrite
history, one which he cannot seem to remember.

Josemar’s use of language reinforces his propensity to
confuse the facts and time frames. His tag questions, such
as 'averdad?,' 'ano?,' or 'gesta claro?“ flood the novel.
In chapter one alone, they appear in at least forty-seven
instances. The proliferation of such linguistic addendums
not only irritate and interrupt, but also counteract their
purpose to verify the truth. They put into question
everything that Josemar relates in his subconscious text.
Another twist has been added to Josemar’s monologue:
his story is presented as if the protagonist had been

interviewed by an anonymous entity who has recorded

Josemar’s thoughts. This technique throws a deceptive
focus on Josemar, who fields direct questions offered in the
present tense 'tu' form.from unidentified, at at times
unidentifiable interviewers. Through context, one can
ascertain the contributors who constantly interrupt

Josemar’s thoughts that shift amongst the identity of his

 

2;_
mother, Carmdnha; Zilmar, his adopted negro brother;
Lourdes, the mother of his two children; and Maria da
Gloria, who ironically seems to be the only character to
believe Josemar. This narrative technique gives the
impression that the reader is witnessing the actual event
instead of recollections within Josemar’s mind.

In turn, Josemar responds to the questions in the third
person preterite as if a spokesperson had been speaking for
him or had recorded Josemar’s voice. This form not only
distorts the presentation of the text, but as René Campos
states 'el discurso surge desde el espacio privado de
Josemar.'3 From his private vantage point, the reader is
given privilege to participate in Josemar’s world, one
created from.an emptiness in which he is entrapped,
emphasized by the repetition of events and meaningless tag
questions. The novel opens with a question from this
vacuum, not posed from.Josemar, but from most likely Maria
da Gloria: 'aCuando fué la ultima vez que me viste?" (9)

The focus on interruptive interlocutors distances the
reader more from.Josemar’s text. Through Josemar’s
presentation of his quest for the truth stands the disparity
between the created world within his mind and the written
text. This gulf underscores his alienation through the
distance created by the numerous conflicting voices in the
text.

DISPARATE NARRATIVE VOICES

Through the use of the third person preterite, Josemar

2;_

has distanced himself from his own invention, and from his
own existence in one sense. The result is a proliferation
of his character into a myriad of roles that constantly
intermingle: Josemar/author, Josemar/narrator,
Josemar/character, and Josemar/person,‘ Not only is
Josemar unable to distinguish between his various functions
within the novel, he also cannot maintain a credible balance
between reality and fiction within the text. Like Puig’s
other characters, Josemar is responsible for the creation
and destruction of the very control which he has attempted
to master by creating the text through his own narrative
voice.

In Puig’s previous novels, other narrative techniques
have served as vehicles for the creation of the novel. The
incorporation of popular culture in these works has acted as
narrator, author and text. For example, the recurrence of
cinematography in El beso de la mujer arafia and La traicion
de Rita Haymorph is infused into the text as a coherent
story-telling device. For a great part of these novels, the
reader is given the opportunity to witness the creation of
the text, as if he were sitting in the audience watching a
movie. The reader has the advantage of following the
characters as they wander in and out of the creation.

Although at times the reader must be dilligent in order
to follow certain characters, their names and
characteristics expose their identity. Sangre de amor

gprrpspondido, however, seems to lack any of Puig’s previous

V

2;;
distinctions in its relationship with the reader. The
revelations of Josemar’s conscience are not reflected
through any of these vehicles, except through sentimental
songs by Roberto Carlos, which situates Josemar’s memories
within a specific timeframe. Every bit of information that
becomes the written text evolves from Josemar’s conscience
which is constructed on a faulty memory. Not only are his
details questionable, but also what Josemar omits (whether
intentionally or not) causes the text to be obfuscated even
further. Events, details, and characters constantly appear
and disappear from the text without ever being identified or
providing any revealing characteristics about themselves.
For example, in chapter seven, Josemar’s monologue is
interrupted by several different characters without any of
them ever being called by name. ‘Unlike Puig’s other novels,
many of his characters in Sangre de amor correspondido
are never directly addressed. In some cases, characters
have no nomenclature whatsoever. Josemar’s true father is
referred to only as 'el dueno de la chacra' whereas his two
illegitimate sons and the woman who bore them.are never
given any clear identification.

Josemar’s role as narrator of Sangre de amor
correspondido demonstrates another way to twist and entrap
the reader. The monologue within Josemar’s mind creates the
deceptive illusion that he has been delegated narrative
command. This not only creates a subjective point of

departure, but also a false textual center. The focus seems

,2;;
to concentrate upon Josemar’s life, escapades, failures, and
his attempt to cope with his miserable situation. The only
manner of survival, as in Puig’s other novels, is to escape
into an acceptable mixture of fantasy and reality--one where
the border between the two has been opaquely muted. The
narrative structure implies the false image of control,
which potentially deceives both Josemar and the reader.
Although the text comes from Josemar’s conscience, the
interviewers provide their half of the dialogue in the
second-person present tense. Thus the characters that
Josemar has created play greater narrative roles than what
appears on the surface.

Josemar’s ever-changing versions of his auto-biography
reveal that he cannot accept himself as the center focus of
the text. Slowly, his stories shift to an outward
direction, placing spotlight (as wellas the blame) upon the
interviewers. By permitting other characters to pose the
questions, Josemar eventually concedes partial narrative
control to them. They must step in to create and edit the
text so that it cannot get out of hand. The participating
characters keep Josemar’s stories 'in check' (Bacarisse,
210). Whenever his versions become too suspicious, an
interlocutor then interrupts to contradict him:

Hasta que aquella noche del baile del sébado se fueron

al hotel. En el baile estaban contentos, felices de la

vida.

---¢De qué hablabamos en el baile? quiero ver si me
estas diciendo la verdad. (11)

_2_1_4
The image of control is deceptive because the discourse
that ends up on the written page stems from Josemar’s mind,
not directly from the interviewers. Therefore, it seems
that Josemar would have editorial control on what appears as
text. As the stories unfold, the reliability of the
characters who provide the interview questions are put to
task.. In the beginning they seem to contradict Josemar’s
claims, not vice versa. Yet, as the text progresses, it
becomes evident that Josemar cannot maintain narrative
control over his creation. The most evident, of course is
Maria da Gloria. His text does not emphasize their
relationship. Rather, it is based upon the event that lead
to her alleged loss of virginity and the subsequent loss of
her sanity. Although details of Josemar’s sexual prowess
invade the discourse (for example, he exclaims several times
throughout the text 'se la monto como loco'), his comments
and questions underscore not only the effect that it had on
Maria da Gloria, but perhaps more importantly whether she
remembers any of the details that pertain to the events of
their affair. Ironically, Josmar reveals from his very
first utterance that his memory seems to be as deficient as
Maria’s. It does not serve him well nor does he have a
grasp of the truth:
El la vio por ultima vez hace diez afios, ocho afios.
Fue en Cocota, Estado de Rio. En la plaza, del lado
de la iglesia averdad? ella le fue al encuentro, tenian
cita go cémo fue la cosa? (9)

Shortly thereafter, Josemar claims that he had met Maria da

215
(19). His doubts and contradictions about their
relationship are too obvious to dismiss. There does not
seem to be any justification for Josemar to completely
confuse temporal space because he has not experienced enough
in his brief life to entangle its events. If his
relationship with Maria were so relevant to his existence,
then it would seem that their relationship would link
together the basic precepts of chronological time.

Reality and fiction become one through the eyes
Josemar, lending credence to the narrating 'histor,' who
relates the text as he has interpreted and recorded it.5
Josemar displays his evident lack of reliability as a
narrator from the onset of the novel. Life is portrayed as
he has experienced or interpreted it, and it is quite
obvious that he is not sure of his own testimonies. He
distances himself from.his own narrating voice by casting it
to the third person preterite. This way, he cannot be
blamed for the incredibility of the stories. Also, Josemar
can play the same roles as the interviewers: as witness and
judge to the alleged events. Therefore, as he blends in
with the others, Josemar shifts the attention to his
unsuspecting players.

His discourse is based upon challenging questions from
other characters who seek the truth or who already know it.
Their questions serve a variety of purposes: to justify

that Josemar relate his tales, to progress the text, to

uncover a variety of contradictions and variations of the

ggg

text, and to reinforce the fictional boundaries which
Josemar constantly attempts to efface. The participating
characters help Josemar to create his fiction and expose his
incapacity to discover or accept the truth/reality. Truth
is presented as an intangible set of possibilities that is
continually and obsessively reiterated. The 'truth' becomes
so convoluted that the fine line between reality and fiction
is continually subverted by Josemar’s perpetual variations
of his existence. The quest for truth is not an objective of
Josemar’s story-telling since he does not seem to have the
ability to grasp it. His constant reiterations point to his
desire to detect if Maria knows what had transpired during
their relationship, or if at least she sees life from.the
same standpoint as Josemar. He is intent to entrap her in
his version of the 'truth': 'El le va a contar toda la
verdad a la Gloria, de lo que paso antes y después de la
enfermedad de ella' (117). Yet, he keeps changing his
stories about their love affair, and moreover about the
details of the alleged events which led to her loss of
virginity. Two possibilities exist for Josemar’s
strategies. First, he must see if Maria da Gloria knows
more than he does about their relationship (and perhaps
about the Josemar he cannot fathom). If so, she could
expose his indescrepancies and therefore destroy Josemar’s
text .

Secondly, Josemar seems to fight continuously in order

to create a solid version of a final text that he can live

‘g;1
text.

Secondly, Josemar seems to fight continuously in order
to create a solid version of a final text that he can live

with. He lacks a memory which, unlike Maria da Gloria, is
not justifiable. At least it seems that Maria cannot be
held accountable for her actions because of her mental
instability. On the other hand, every time that Josemar
tells Maria a version of the events that had transpired, she
reveals a loophole that forces Josemar to change his story.
Even though she cannot seem to remember, Maria da Gloria
instinctively reacts to Josemar’s lies. Josemar, however,
does not believe that Maria can be a threat to his
inventions. He exposes her illness in the very beginning of
the text, thus dispelling her as a reliable source of the
truth. In Josemar’s eyes, Maria da Gloria cannot subvert
his text because she lacks the key to undermining it: a
memory. However, although Josemar never identifies his
interviewers, it seems that Maria da Gloria posits the
majority of the questions, thus entrapping Josemar in his
own deceptions. Josemar has made a grave error: truth and
memory do not equate.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes evident that Maria da
Gloria does not remember the details of the pain or pleasure
of her deflowering, and for a good reason: it seems to have
never occurred. First Josemar tells her that she lost her
virginity in a hotel. Maria knows that an unchaperoned

young girl from.her class standing would not be able to

 

pmg
register in a hotel, moreover with a young man from the
'chacra' without anyone taking notice: 'g---Y nadie se dio
cuenta, que una chica de quince afios entraba a un hotel?'
(9). Thus, Josemar changes the location of the event to the
bushes, then to under a tree. Once the reader is led to
doubt the veracity of Maria da Gloria’s loss of virginity,
Josemar reveals the event which serves as the catalyst of
the novel: his attempt to consummate their relationship in

his mother’s shed:

La Gloria nunca habia llegado hasta ahi, no conocia la
casa y entraron por la puerta del fondo del galpén, la
otra puerta se veia desde la ventana de la cocina, y
los hermanos varones ya sabian todo...era la primera
vez que alguien 5e montaba a la Gloria, pero él cerro
bien la puerta rapidito, y las ventanas. Se quedaron
afuera sin oir nada, los carajos. El acorto la rienda
en seguida, asi ella no tenia més tiempo de
arrepentirse, lo que ella empezo a sentir fue mucho
frio. (113)
Josemar does not expose to Maria da Gloria (or to the
reader) the true version until the end of the first half of
the novel. There is little reason to believe this version
of Maria’s deflowering since it does not vary from.any of
the other stories that Josemar has fabricated. It is not
until the rest of the novel comes together that this
particular account can be verified by his mother as the
official story. Still, Josemar contends until the last
chapter of the novel that he and Maria da Gloria did indeed
consummate their relationship.

Other details of their love affair are also based on

half-truths, not because Josemar is a spinner of tall

;;_

tales, but rather because he too lacks a memory, entrapped
in the fantasy of capturing his prey from a higher social
class: 'De ahi en adelante él parece que se olvidé, traté
de
olvidarse y no se acuerda ya mas nada“ (22). When any of
the interviewers pressure Josemar to reveal the truth, he
hurriedly shifts to the present tense, frantically searching
for the cigarettes that seem to link the past with the
present: “Y no encuentra los fosforos, tiene que fumar para
acordarse de aquello' (25).

The truth seems to be that Josemar wants to put his
past behind him:

...lo que necesita ahora es resolver sus problemas,

él quiere este afio resolver todos sus problemas

para vivir un poco mas la vida, porque filtimamente no

he vivido nada. (101)
However, Josemar unveils the real reason for rejecting his
past:

Carajo, e1 problema del trabajo por un lado, y encima

la enfermedad de la madre, esta bien jodido. Ahi no

tiene tiempo, no tiene manera, no le da el tiempo para

olvidarse y dedicar algun rato al sexo aesta claro?
(101)
He does not mention Maria da Gloria, rather the theme of
forgetting is emphasized. The loss of memory is not only a
central focus, but this handicap also becomes a key to
reading Josemar’s texts. The woman whom he claims to have
loved, whose life revolved around him, is effaced through

Josemar’s attempt to reproduce his life, his text: 'El por

mas que quiere acordarse a veces hasta se olvida de la cara

;;__
de ella. De la boca' (66). Even a true image of Maria da
Gloria does not help Josemar to remember:

Lo que tenia era la foto, y la miraba muchas veces. Y

después cerraba los ojos, para ver si se acordaba de la

cara de ella sin estar mirando la foto...no 5e podia
acordar ni de la cara de ella ni de la cara de la madre

de ella. (121)
The more Josemar tries to forget, the greater the burden of
the past becomes. It seems that his dependency upon the
lost relationship does not have so much to do with Maria da
Gloria as it does with ideals and values she symbolizes.
THE MASK OF SOCIETY

Sangre de amor correspondido mirrors Josemar’s life--

both text and life are based upon prevarications, denial

and alienation. Two conflicts that form the foundation of
the novel are evident and intertwined: Josemar’s
questionable parentage and resulting lower class status; and
the love trist between him and the woman from the 'other
side of town," Maria da Gloria. The main focus of Sangre de
amor correspondido, Maria’s deflowering, is a significant
point of departure.

Josemar’s justification to tell his stories revolves
around the sordid details of the love affair between him.and
Maria da Gloria. One must question why Maria’s affections
stand out so brilliantly when Josemar relates his many
different sexual relationships with other women. Through
the descriptions of his relationships, it becomes evident

that they do not represent the challenge nor the reward for

Josemar because they come from the same lower class standing

2;;
as he. Therefore, the temptation to taste the “forbidden
fruit“ does not exist. For example, Josemar frequently
mentions Azucena’s willingness to make love with him, He
also emphasizes the fact that she is of the same social
standing, thus minimizing the importance of his triumph.

Josemar too, iterates the conquest of his grade-school
teacher, Valsei, on whom he had a crush as a young boy.

Ironically, she does not remember Josemar when he pursues
her. Most revealing perhaps, is a vaguely identified woman
named Lourdes, who bore his two illegitimate sons. She not
only invades the text, but also serves as a link between
Josemar and his idealized mother.

Josemar contends that he wanted Maria da Gloria the
moment he laid eyes on her. Although she is not described
in exceptional detail, it is the first time in Manuel Puig’s

novels that the reader is provided with any specific
physical descriptions of his characters.‘ Yet, one must
question why the characteristics are included. Ironically,
the descriptions provided speak more of Josemar than of
Maria da Gloria, the character described. In one breath,
Josemar describes Maria da Gloria’s youthful looks, and in
another he cannot remember what she looks like, even after
referring to her photograph. Furthermore, Josemar is unable

to remember his own appearance without gazing in the mirror.

Physical characteristics are not what they appear to be

in Sangre de amor correspondido. The loss of memory seems

 

p_;

to erase not only the importance of outward appearance, but
also its superficiality. Beauty is not merely skin deep; on
the contrary, physical characteristics for Josemar determine
success or failure in life. He knows that he cannot live up
to the expectations that Maria da Gloria has proposed for
him, She wants him to go to school to become an electrician
which would require an expensive tuition. Social barriers
restrict Josemar from pursuing a career. His “macho“ values
prohibit him from.taking money from her father as well.
Thus, Josemar is destined to live the fate that society has
dictated to someone of his social standing. His appearance
is a case in point. The text has made apparent one
determining factor within the confines of rural Brazil:
social hierarchy based on skin color. Josemar realizes that
he does not belong to Maria’s class nor is he accepted as
one of his own family. Josemar’s light skin tone reveals
the crux of the conflict. He does not reflect the indian
blood of his mother and father, rather Maria da Gloria
points out 'Y yo sé por qué eras diferente' (31). Josemar
was obviously considered as an outcast of the family:

El tercer hijo era mas blanco, no tenia cara de indio

como todos los demas, era mas lindo todavia que los

hijos del duefio del campo, que eran blancos como el

Josemar. (31)
The 'sangre pura“ of his parents, although it is of “wild
indian“ stock, determines his family’s social status. They

are deemed to be poor owners of a non-profitable 'chacra.“

After all, his grandmother “era india...si la habian

22
agarrado entre los matorrales, al fondo alla en la selva, le
habian echado el lazo' (75). Moreover, Josemar’s lack of
indian characteristics determines that he is illegitimate,
which carries unfortunate consequences. First, he is
rejected by his father who is aware that Josemar is not one
of his own. More importantly, Josemar must bear both the
stigma of illegitimacy and the resulting lower class status.
How Josemar perceives life is shaped by those who either
accept or reject him.

Josemar’s relationship with Maria da Gloria seems to
exist upon the prospect of conquest of the upper class
rather than on love or physical attraction. This perhaps,
accounts for Josemar dwelling upon the subject throughout
the novel. Maria da Gloria was not an impossible catch, on
the contrary she was a naive and innocent adolescent still
experiencing the throes of puberty:

Pero para entonces él ya habia visto a la

muchachita, 1a Maria da Gloria, por la calle, fue

cuando él se metié con ella.... Era una criatura pero

ya estaba formada, iba a cumplir doce afios, una
muchacha ya bien fuerte, lindona, ya con los pechitos
bien grandes. El pelo rubio bien largo, la carne
blanca, los cachetes bien colorados de la sangre que ya
estaba empezando a calentarse, y un dia le iba a hervir

5y volcarse toda? (42-43)

As Josemar reiterates in the text, he could sleep with
whomever he wished. Yet, he is obsessed with the details of
their affair and the ultimate failure to consummate his
relationship with Maria da Gloria, who represents something

much bigger than life to Josemar.

Josemar and Maria da Gloria share one element in

24
common: the shade of their skin. However, the similarities
end there. Maria da Gloria hails from white, middle-class
stock. Her father is a successful salesman that was able to
provide a nice home in the “proper' neighborhood. On the
other hand, Josemar comes from the rural 'chacra' where not
only is everyone poor, but whose origins carry a negative
stigma. Josemar is well aware of the differences that
separate the two social groups:

Los que viven en el campo son totalmente diferentes

ano? la gente del pueblo sabe mas cosas, y hasta se

burla de la gente del campo. Los del campo hablan
diferente, hablan mal, cuando tienen a una persona
delante no le dicen las palabras que deben, los
paulistas tampoco, parece que estén siempre cantando,
no hablan portugués claro... ropa comun. Son simples
para vestir. Andan mucho descalzos, entonces por ese
motivo la gente del pueblo los encuentra raros,
diferentes, entonces dicen, “Aquel es un chacarero,

anda descalzo'. (85-86)

No matter what Josemar attempts, he cannot diminish the
gulf that separates him and the middle class and remains
alienated from.Maria da Gloria’s social privileges. For
example, he makes a point to leave for the dances in Cocota
in the evening so that the dust stirred up by the trucks
traveling on the road will have settled by then. That way,
his long walk into town will not reveal 'el pelo todo lleno
de polvo“ (86). Yet, Josemar continues to insist that he
has eroded the barriers that distinguish him.from.Maria da
Gloria.

Although Josemar and Maria da Gloria may have continued

a relationship for some time, her mother’s approval of it

is somewhat questionable. Josemar claims to have charmed

g;_
her mother through his “macho' wiles, yet it is doubtful
that she would have permitted her adolescent daughter to run
free with him where other townsfolk could witness their
escapades and spread harmful rumors. He purports that he
formally lunched with Maria da Gloria’s family when she
knows that her parents would have never permitted it. He
also claims to have escorted Maria da Gloria to a large
family picnic in the country. The more Josemar claims, the
less credible his text becomes. Josemar also mixes with the
same kind of fantasy that through the myths of 'machismo“
that entrap him in social barriers that prohibit individual
identity. His macho behavior is most evident through the
particpation on the soccer teams. First, he claims to have
played on the team in Cocota where Maria da Gloria’s father
was the coach. Not only was Josemar the hero, but also he
had duped Maria’s father for having relations with his
daughter without him.being aware of it. However, Josemar’s
story contains too many doubtful details. Most importantly,
being from the 'chacra,' he would never have been permitted
to join the amateur 'middle-class' soccer league.

Based upon his first story, Josemar’s soccer fantasy in
chapter seven must also be considered as unreliable. Not
only does Maria da Gloria become silent during his
monologue, but also Josemar removes himself from the center
of narration. Instead, he views himself as if he were being
broadcast on the radio: “;Josemar! aJosemar! :Viva nuestra

nueva gloria!“ (130). Although he has revealed his

gag
jpropensity to narrate pure falsehood, Josemar believes that
no one can even investigate this one: “...y tenia a todo el
:mundo a sus pies averdad? Qué vayan y pregunten de él en
Bauru, todo el mundo se acuerda“ (131). On one hand,
distance proves to be an advantage for Josemar. No one can
question the veracity of the story because he was alone in
Bauru, a city much too far away for the text’s witnesses to R

attempt to disprove. Spacial referents mean little to

 

Josemar and are as distorted as his time frames. One minute n
he is bowing to his female soccer fans after a glorious
Hatch in Bauru, the next he is struggling to make a living
as an 'abafiil“ in Santisimo.

Distance, however proves to be a disadvantage for
Josemar. It not only accelerates his vicious cycle of
failure, it also drives a further wedge between him and his
family. His parents or siblings could not identify with
him, perceiving him as “different,' not fitting in. In
chapter two when Josemar returns to the chacra in his new
car, the separation between them is evident: “aQué es eso,
hijita? aes una tormenta?', 'No, sefiora, es un coche que se
acerca, un Maverick“, 'aQuién viene, hijita?', “No sé
sefiora, de lejos no veo la cara pero tiene ropa
nueva...“Hijita, él se va a reir de nosotros porque somos
pobres ano te parece?“, 'No sé sefiora, ese joven tal vez
esté pasando a mucha velocidad, y parar por acé, no va a
parar'. (40)

Ironically, Josemar’s Maverick changes into a Gordoni,

221

and later he wishes that someday he would like to own an
automobile. Furthermore, in the following chapter, Josemar
reveals that upon returning to the “chacra“ after a ten year
absence, his mother does not recognize him, not because of
his high class appearance, but rather for the worst possible
reason-~she could not remember him: la madre no lo
reconocié...“El asunto es el siguiente: yo tengo un hijo que
se llama asi, Josemar, pero a usted no lo conozco'...él se
quedo hablando después solo con la madre una hora y media,
mas o menos para ver si ella lo reconocia, pero no lo
reconocio. (42) Although the years and his long, disheveled
hair had changed Josemar, the denial of his mother equates a
rejection of his consanguinity. She too seems to lack the
key to complete control: a memory. However, we will see
that this theory can be dispelled at the end of the novel.

Josemar’s numerous siblings are not subject to the
rejection and cruelty that he had suffered. On the
contrary, they are left alone to live as they wish. Even

Zilmar, the adopted negro son is treated better than
Josemar. The latter is viewed “come 51 fuera adoptivo“
(73). However, in his family’s eyes, a negro like Zilmar
'with legitimate parentage merits a higher status than a
biological offspring whose skin tone proves “que el tercero
era hijo del dueno del campo' (74). Josemar’s resentment is
‘manifest through is disrespectful conduct toward his
half-brother, relating to him from a societal standpoint.

At least Josemar sees himself on a higher social rung than

 

22_
his black sibling.

Josemar believes that his race permits him to enjoy a
higher status than Zilmar, thus he addresses him.as if he
‘were low-class trash, even though Zilmar is the only person
that looks up to Josemar. He is quick to jump to the
defense of class structure that has entrapped him.when
Zilmar complains of its subjectivity:

...tiene que haber gente mas pobre y gente mas rica.

Hay gente que no le alcanza para comer y otros que se

sirven estos casi dos kilos de papas fritas, y no dejan

ni una de recuerdo. Si, en los paises comunistas dicen
que si, pero aca, no. Acé no es posible porque si
fuese toda la gente del mismo nivel entonces nadie
trabajaria. Pero eso es demasiado para que lo entienda

un negro ignorante ;como usted! (139-141)

Zilmar serves as the scapegoat of Josemar’s conscience
'who mirrors Josemar’s marginalization from society and his
family. Josemar represents a true reflection of the
problematics of the search for an identity that is linked to
culture and society. On a larger scale, it can be proposed
that Josemar’s quest parallels that of Latin America; both
are bastards of racial infusion.

Most revealing to Josemar’s alienation is his
relationship with his father, Astolfo, who enters and exits
the text without much character development. The reader is
placed in the same position as Josemar, distanced from.the
identity that has determined Josemar’s ideals, values, and
social standing. Astolfo, like Maria da Gloria, represents

Josemar’s failure to escape the alienable societal confines

‘which he cannot break down. Astolfo is a victim of his

 

2_2_
destiny and social barriers as well. He became a drunk and
escaped to Santisimo, perhaps in order to erase the marks
from Cocota which publicized that he did not father his
third child. In Santisimo, Astolfo builds a new house and
life, working within the limitations of his social class as
a stevedore. Eventually, he returns to the 'chacra,'
leaving the house which Josemar eventually calls his own.

Somewhere in between, Josemar relates that he and his
father reconcile in Cocota. He covertly reveals that his
father has accepted his son:

...cuando a la tarde se quedaban los dos solos el

padre se quedaba mirandolo, y lloraba, estaba muy

cambiado, ya no empinaba e1 codo...El dia que el hijo

se fue de vuelta a Mato Grosso el padre fue y corté mas
rosas todavia, lo trataba diferente, lo consideraba

como hijo... . (174)

Moreover, Josemar exposes the underlying controlling
force, of both his life, and as we will discover, of the
text: his mother, Carminha (whose name is not revealed
until late in the story). She has controlled Astolfo’s life
and failure. By conceiving an illegitimate son, Carminha
exposes the taboos mandated by society. Not only has she
been unfaithful, but also suggests that her husband could
not fulfill his masculine role, therefore seeking
satisfaction elsewhere. More damaging to Astolfo’s identity
is the fact that Josemar’s biological father comes from a
much higher class than he, further emphasizing his sorry and

inescapble state in life.

Carminha represents both the link and the destroyer of

222
the relationship between Astolfo and Josemar. She has
determined their lives as well as their failures. Although
the two do not share consanguinity, they indeed have much in
common: a determining and alienating force beyond their
control.

Most descructive to Josemar’s identity is the
realization of his mother’s deception. She is the only
person whom he idealizes and completely trusts. Yet, she
ultimately controls and entraps Josemar in an existence and
failure from which he cannot escape. From the beginning of
the novel, Carminha establishes control of Josemar and his
text. He places his confidence in her when he intends to
flee the “chacra': 'El solito planed todo, la unica que los
sabia era la madre de él“ (17). However, Josemar is well
aware of her potential:

-Usted parece una gallina bataraza con ese pelo canoso

y todo crespo, todo sin peinar“... La madre de él es

buena, si nadie 5e mete con ella, son las gallinas

bagarazas las que dan picotazos que pueden lastimar.

Josemar cannot outwardly admit that she does not represent
the idyllic savior that he had imagined. She did protect
him.from.his violent father who had beat him repeatedly for
burning his rice machine and killing their greatest source
of income: the cow that had gored Josemar when his father
forced him.to walk by it. On a deeper level, the slaughter
of the cow was not merely vengence, rather a violent and

symbolic act against his father. Josemar claims to have

fornicated with the cow previously, symbolically raping

2_2

something out of his own 'class,' similar to how Josemar was
conceived. Thus, by killing the cow, Josemar can release
the hatred built up towards his father. However, this act
further fuels the fire. His father attempts to kill Josemar
and his mother steps in to protect him. She and Josemar
flee, sleeping under an “arbol de mandarina' (38) where the
cobras or just as venemous, his father, will not attack.

She later convinces an aunt to take Josemar to live with her
so that Josemar will be safe. On the other hand, it can be
considered that Josemar’s mother is actively contributing to
his exile, precluding any possible reconciliation between
Josemar and his father, and controlling his bleak and
alienating destiny. Five years later Josemar returns, only
to find out that his own mother does not recognize him, His
image of the perfect mother figure is gradually shattered.
Josemar contends until the end of the novel that his mother
always knew her place in society. She worked as a
washer-woman for several middle-class families, never
complaining of her low status. Her acceptance of her
station in life is deceptive, however. Although, Josemar
does not admit to it, Carminha cannot allow Josemar to
pursue Maria da Gloria. It is possible that she does not
want him to repeat her error, but more likely is that she
.must maintain control of her son, the only evidence she has
of her affair with 'el duefio de la chacra.“ The picture
that Josmar keeps of her reflects his image of her:

Y él 1e pidio que le dejara la foto, pero si se olvida

232
que se la lleve nomas, él no le va a andar rogando
nada.La Maria da Gloria nunca vio la foto, de la madre
de él cuando era criaturita, de ocho afios, una postal
en colores, no era foto de ella misma, porque en la
familia eran pobres y en el campo no sacaban fotos...
(194).
Maria da Gloria attempts to shatter the false image of his
mother that Josemar has maintained. Throughout the text,
she mentions well-known gossip that she has learned: 'La
madre tenia la culpa' (34) (to which Josemar does not
respond) or 'Tu mama te hizo un mal que jamas va a tener
remedio“ (95). In his final chapter, Josemar breaks the
barrier and admits both the truth and her treachery:
:vieja sarnosa y puta madre que te parié! que la culpa
de todo es tuya, vieja inmunda, ella estaba entrando al
galpon, ella me queria, ella estaba decidida esa noche,
y yo la iba a prenar :bien prefiada! zése era mi plan!
Ya después los padres no iban a poder decir nada. Pero
ese dia la asustaste, se arrepintio gno te das cuenta
de eso? y la hiciste sentir como una puta... (197).
Yet, afterward Josemar falls back into his dream world,
reiterating that he loves his mother unconditionally. The
acceptance of his mother’s control allows him to surrender
his text, and along with it the blame for his miserable
life.
MOTHER’S VOICE OF AUTHORITY
Through Josemar’s confession of the truth, he
relinquishes the reins of control to his mother, who
replaces him as the authorial voice. The convoluted text
becomes further distanced from the reader. Josemar’s

interior monologue now belongs in the hands of his mother,

‘NhO edits and controls the text according to her own needs.

222

One of those is to force Josemar to love her
unconditionally even though she is responsible for his
failure in life. Not only did she catch him and Maria da
Gloria in the shed ready to consummate their relationship,
but also she bled his money dry in order to receive hospital
treatments for her rheumatism. She acheived her financial
needs by selling the house in Santisimo, which was the only
roof over Josemar’s head. It also represented his freedom
from his mother and was the only link to reconciliation with
his father, Astolfo, who had built it after escaping from
the life that was killing him (and Josemar). That edifice
served the same objective for his son: a place to forget his
past in Cocota and to attempt to begin anew once again.
Therefore, by selling the house, his mother symbolically
forfeits Josemar’s identity and hope for the future.
Josemar must once again swallow his words: 'La madre de él
nunca los abandono. Y nunca jamas va a permitir que él se
quede sin techo. Antes se deja matar' (68). And of course,
he must blame Carminha for his parentage, the 'mala sangre“
which he passes down to his two illegitimate children, thus
casting their future failure and entrapment in stone.
Josemar’s mother maintains authorial voice long enough
for him to subvert her authority and make her the literal
testimony for his failures in life. Once he has textualized
his blame, Josemar does not need to depend upon his memory
as a literary map to seeking the truth. Realizing that he

is no longer the creator of his own fictions, he

224

relinquishes the title to his mother. She finishes the text
on his behalf, offering the “true' image of Josemar:

...al Josemar lo quieren de todas partes, porque es tan

lindo, y él no anda siempre necesitando de tanto como

los otros, porque esta lleno de cosas, y del carifio de

tantas mujeres que le van atras, algunas descaradas y

otras no. Y por eso él me puede querer mucho y no me

pide nada, porque él no tiene mucho dinero pero tiene

otras cosas, y es como 5i fuera rico. (203)
Josemar atttempts a final effort to regain control of the
text by offering the epilogue. However, it is little more
than a reflection of the first chapter. By traveling back
to its beginning, Josemar proves his perpetual entrapment in
a spiral journey that never ends.
CONCLUSION

Sangre de amor correspondido represents a step in
Puig’s evolution of novels. In many ways, this penultimate
novel demonstrates that Puig’s writing is circular as well.
His first two novels, La traicién de Rita Haymorth and
Bogpitas pintadas offer self-effacing authors that write,
edit, and destroy the texts upon which the novels rest. The
main characters, like Josemar, rely on memories to
construct their texts, lending the possibilites of effusing
reality and fiction. They all find the need to escape from
reality in order to accept their miserable existence as the
result of a repressive South American government. The
reader as well must participate in order to separate the
fine distinction between reality and fiction, as well as to

piece the text together. Yet, because of the continual

spiraling of time and space, the reader is offered multiple

22_
readings through the re(creation) of the text that can both
enlighten and entrap. The narrative conventions in this
novel appear simple in Sangre de amor correspondido,
stemming from a solitary source: the protagonist’s
subconscience. This is not the first time that Puig has
employed interior monologue or stream-of-consciousness as a
form.of narration. However, Josemar’s discourse appears as
a disparate and distanced text, one where the role of
contributing interviewers actually remains questionable.
Rather, their questions are reiterated to serve as stimulus
for Josemar’s thoughts. In all of Puig’s previous novels,
characters have anonymously appeared and disappeared, yet
they were either directly addressed or identifiable through
their speech patterns. In Sangre de amor correspondidOAW,
however, characters bear no nomenclature, and in some
instances display no identifiable characteristics.

The repressive force of social class plays an
overriding factor in the text as it has in Puig’s previous
novels. In this work the focus has shifted to the lowest
rung on the social ladder where no possibility exists to
escape the confines dictated by society. The barriers
imposed upon Josemar are reflected literally and
metaphorically through his attempt to ascertain some type of
identity out of the clutter of the “macho' ideals and values
handed down to him by history and consanguinity, paralleling

the situation of Latin America.

Sangre ge ampr gorresppndidg can be classified perhaps,

 

22_
as a misrepresentation. The novel, as well as Josemar’s
life is based upon a distortion of reality and the truth,
upon ideas and events conjured up within his conscience that
may have never happened, or with people who never existed.
So is his text and the readings created from.within. Josemar
offers a deceptive center: the broken relationship with
Maria da Gloria, whose deflowering never occurred (perhaps
Maria da Gloria is his mirror image, whose infirmity
actually reflects Josemar’s state of mind). His goal
focuses upon the “deflowering ' of a forbidden social class
with hopes of diffusing the differences that alienate him
from belonging to Maria’s social group. Instead, Josemar’s
mother, Carminha, ultimately controls and authors his text,
preventing the rape of social tradition, ideals and
unpenetrable barriers. Thus, Josemar’s auto-representation
is shattered, proliferating the possibilities of
perpetuating images of the final text. The reader is left
with the responsibility of (re)editing the various readings
that emanate from the dialectic between the truth and

Josemar’s version of it.

NOTES

1. Jesfis, Lazaro, “La inquisicion sobre la soledad de
Manuel Puig“, Quimera 4 (1981): 44.

2. Pamela Bacarisse, “Life’s a Dream,' The Necessapy

Dream: A Study of the Novels of Manuel Puig, (Totowa, NJ:
Barnes & Noble: 1988): 219.

3. René Campos, “Una estrategia fallida: El recuento de
Sangre de amor correspondido“, Chasgpi 18.2 (Nov. 1989), 37.

4. The notion of the split role of Josemar is taken up
by Campos in “Una estrategia fallida: El recuento de Sangre
de amor correspondido, in which he refers to it as 'el
desdoblamiento de Yo/Otro' (40).

5. For a definition of histor, see Robert Scholes and
Kellogg. (The Nature of Narrative, New York: Oxford UP,
1966), who trace his role back to the ancient Greeks,
classifying him as “not a recorder or recounter but an
investigator. He examines the past with an eye toward
separating out actuality from.myth' (242).

6. That is not to say that Puig has completely
relinquished his authority in his previous novels. See
Lucille Kerr, Suspended Fictions: Reading Novels by Manuel
Pu'g (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1987). She contends that Puig
has rejected the role of the traditional author, and instead
has handed the responsibility over to the narrating subjects:
'[In his novels] many curious moves are made by the authors
figured in these texts. These figures come together in
Puig’s writing to form the unfinished image of an author who
is suspended above and within the total, yet incomplete, text
through which it is constituted...Such authorial moves
produce no final figure or system of authority, no fixed view
of where an individual or overriding authorial figure stands
in Puig’s fiction“ (240).

237

CONCLUSION

Manuel Puig has been categorized as one of Latin
America’s most influential 'Junior Boom“ authors of the
twentieth century. His unique perspective of Argentinian and
Latin American society implicitly exposes the repressive
atmosphere of its people in a context that links political
and historical reality with narrative fiction. Although Puig
does not provide explicit historical or political events, he
paints the specific societal image under the Peron regime of
the 19305 and 19405, as well as its second generation of the
19705. Puig’s criticism is found buried within the text,
through attitudes and self-alienation inflicted upon his
characters who seem to live on the periphery of society.

A consequence of Argentina’s repressive political
system results in alienation and entrapment of its people.
These concepts link history and literature and play

significant roles as a principal theme and structural device

in La traicion de Rita Haymorth, Bogpitas pintadas, El beso
de la mujer arafia, and Sangre de amor correspondido.

Through the thematic, narrative, and structural levels
the characters display their entrapment and alienation, and
the reader becomes a potential victim as well. Alienation

and entrapment are elusive traits in Puig’s works that

238

 

239
co-exist on two levels--the textual, and that which is
hidden “underneath“ it. The narrative structure of the
novels offers a twisting path of fragmentations and
discursive elements that continually shifts the texts’s
temporal plan and alienates the textual and temporal
fragments from parallel narrative voices and structures, and
from.the reader. Through narrative conventions that vary
from traditional dialogue and footnoting to those based on
popular culture, the novels supply the foundation for
alienation and entrapment by providing conflicting or
isolated texts. The fragmentation by theme, subject, or
temporal and spacial planes invite the reader to actively
participate in the (re)construction of the text. By the end
of the novel, the pieces of the puzzle seem to fit together,
but due to the deceptive circular or linear narrative
structure of the texts, the reader must re-interpret the
entire novel from a distanced a priori point of view.

The role of popular culture contributes to the
deceptive nature of the texts. All four novels of this study
use mass culture as narrative and generic strategies. Soap
operas, tango lyrics, movies and radio broadcasts shape the
attitudes, cultural myths and ideals, and linguistic ticks
of the characters while establishing the atmosphere and
direction of the texts. Pop culture speaks for the
characters that invades their psyche and personality. All
the characters in the novels are somehow bound to the

conventions that alienate them. The result is that the

240

conventions of pop culture displaces all the characters from
the literary world through the act of reading. The reader
becomes disjoined through the very same instances. These
adaptations from the extra-textual world placed within the
text leads the reader to identify with them from a distanced
point of view. La traicion de Rita Haymorth
offers the potential for alienation and entrapment through
the glitz of Hollywood Grade B movies from the 19305 and
19405. Used as an escape mechanism, especially for Toto, the
movies also serve as a narrative device that infuse reality
and fantasy and functions as a manipulative device. Toto
attempts to control the text by conflating his life with the
deceptive ideals and stories borrowed from the cinema. His
hand at control fails and vies with his father’s
manipulation of life and textual dominance. The convoluted
narrative structure reveals that Berto holds the key to
authorial dominance and direction of the text. The
revelation of his letter to his brother, Jaime in the
penultimate chapter not only exposes the potential to
subvert authorial control, but also underscores the
vulnerability of authorial displacement. The reader is left
with a text potentially out of control, continually reaching
back to a past that has entrapped its characters.

Bo it s intadas follows the same pattern as pg
tr ici n de Ri H r h. Its characters are entrapped in
the past, constantly resurrecting the memory of Juan Carlos

Etchepare. The text is based upon nostalgia, which functions

 

241
as theme as well as technique. The narrative structure and
voice is more complex than in La traicion, offering the
folletin as the scaffolding. The folletin and entrega are
combined with contemporary devices from mass culture,
leading the reader to follow contradictory and deceptive
narrative strategies. Cultural reality and the conventions
of pop culture and literature become so intertwined that the
two converge, blurring reality and the representation of
reality on which the interpretation of the text depends. The
characters are entrapped by the escape mechanisms that
culture has offered them, Moreover, they are ensnared by the
inescapable societal divisions that chain each character to
his class and fate. They attempt to flee the spacial
confines in search for emotional, social, and psychological
freedom, but they discover that they are doomed to their
banal existence.

The same fate holds true for Valentin and Molina in E;
beso de la mujer arafia. These two prisoners are spacially
and psychologically entrapped within the margins that
society has imposed on them. This novel leaves little doubt
of its critical objective. One half of the perspective of
the text is provided by Puig’s first political activist,
Valentin, who attempts to persuade Molina, an ardent
disprover of Peronism, to fight for a new ideology. The
question of class does not seem to lurk in the forefront,
rather political and sexual freedom rank highest. As with

Puig’s other characters, Valentin and Molina remain

242
marginalized victims of the society that bore them.

Molina and Valentin are emotionally and pyscholgically
entrapped by the devices that sustain them. Although Molina
is able to separate his existence from the movies he
narrates, he cannot comprehend reality without applying it
to the values, ideals and mores of the movies. Valentin,
cannot escape his political ideologies either.

Life is seen through the Marxist ideals that has
imprisoned and alienated him from the rest of society. The
movie recollections offer a narrative device that serves as
both a central focus of the text and a framing device for
Molina’s and Valentin’s dialogue that eventually subverts
the movie narratives. The function of film as a narrative,
thematic and generic device cannot be overshadowed. It not
only acts as an escape mechanism for the characters, but
also potentially entraps the reader who, like Molina and
Valentin interpret through identification. The use of
footnotes also add to the deceptive quality of El beso de la
mujer arana which shifts the focus from the main text to
what awaits below. The footnotes distance the reader to the
margins of the text, necessitating the interpretation of two
distinct texts simultaneously. The reader must deal with at
least two separate discourses, contributing to textual
subversion or contradiction already offered by narrative and
thematic strategies.

Contradiction is a key element in Sangre de amor

gorrespondidp. The protagonist, Josemar attempts to control

243
narrative and authorial voice through his interior
monologue. He never seems to grasp the reins of textual
dominance, continually shifting from second person present
tense to the third person preterite. Josemar’s ramblings
reflect the distorted characteristics of an endless free
association. He constantly reiterates his text in search for
the truth, not only repeating, but editing, only to attempt
to efface his textual footprints in the end. The concept of
truth cannot be grasped by Josemar. He is bound to the
social stigma of being an illegitimate child from.the poor
class. As hard as he tries to escape the social barriers
that preclude him from having a relationship with Maria da
Gloria, nothing can break the societal chains that bind him.
Only his mother, Carminha comprehends his fate. She has
accepted her situation in life, which is why she is able to
take control of Josemar’s text in the end. She is the holder
and bearer of absolute truth.

The social realism of Puig’s works reveals the
problematics of existence under the stifling grip of
Argentine repressive society. His innovative narrative
techniques place him among Latin America’s most influential
writers. Much of the attractibility of La traicion de Riga
Haymorth, Bogpipaa pintadas, El beso ge la mujar arana, and
Sangre de amor correappndido is indebted to the potential to
unearth readings “underneath“ the text that involves the
active participation of the reader to the extent that his

own entrapment and alienation become a distinct possibility.

244
The reader can become easily bound to the text
through the many avenues that Puig has offered, whether it
be authorial play, thematic, narrative, or generic devices.
The act of reading cannot be considered a mere exercise in
Puig’s works, rather an adventure where the reader may be

one of his potential victims.

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