Manuel Puig

Abstract

Abstract This chapter analyzes Puig’s novels from a double critical perspective. One is the notion of myth personnel (Charles Mauron’s psychocritique) together with Freud’s uncanny, Otto Rank’s double, Lacan’s linguistic unconscious—as represented by the autobiographical fictional layer. The other is the notion of “collective myths” (Claude Levi-Strauss’s bricolage, Susan Sontag’s kitsch and camp, Umberto Eco’s apocalyptic and integrated) that permeate the collective unconscious, present in popular culture and mass-media. Puig’s entire work is an illustration of his recurrent statement that the “contemporary novel starts with Freud”—for him, psychoanalysis was a tool not only to create his characters but also for self-analysis. He also knew, by personal experience, of the power and seduction of collective dreams expressed mostly by films but also by tango and bolero lyrics, soap operas and detective novels. This collective unconscious was tied with his socio-political investigation of what he called “Argentine mistake, a political mistake, a sexual mistake.” Based upon Puig’s predilection for popular culture some critics have judged his work as entertaining and trivial, though his real lineage is with Borges in his use of parody, humor, intertextuality, and generic transgression as well as his fondness for detective novel, the fantastic, and Hollywood movies.