Before the DVD release for 1985 film Kiss Of The Spiderwoman starring William Hurt and Raul Julia, which was based on the 1976 novel of the same name by Argentine author Manuel Puig , I wondered what it was that actually made a Latin American novel? Were certain elements required? Is authenticity an issue? ...

By: Rodrigo Toromoreno (Toronto Correspondent - Canada)

Latin American texts are only defined as such in terms of geography. One can say that novel ‘X' is a great Latin American work and all this implies is that the novel was either a) not written in Europe, North America, or the eastern hemisphere; or  b) the plot is not situated in said locations. Although the apparent effrontery that gives this statement its weight may be mistakenly interpreted as a rash generalization of an academically accredited class of literature, such intentions are far removed from the actual purpose of this article. Instead, a literature that lacks a specific definition is also free from the constraints often accompanied by categorizations.  

To use the term ‘Hispano-American' as an adjective preceding the word ‘novel' is to say that all of the works organized under this title share common elements amongst them. One is tempted to argue that this element is the Spanish language that all the authors use when writing these works. Nevertheless, even the linguistic component of this literature opposes any generality since the languages used in the Ibero-American regions of the world are many. The Popol Vuh, for example, is written in a language known as Maya Quiché and recounts a distinct creation myth to the canonical version of Genesis. The Guatemalan Nobel Laureate Miguel Angel Asturias later took the work and used it as a major influence on his Leyendas de Guatemala (Legends of Guatemala) which reached a wider range of readers by translating the indigenous legends into Spanish while adding a modernist revision to the originals. While Maya Quiché is only one example of a plethora of indigenous languages used in Central and South America, the Ecuadorian Jorge Icaza's Huasipungo (Our Village) uses the a mixture of Spanish and Quechua (the native language of the Andean region) to portray the strife and exploitation of Ecuador's indigenous people. This hybrid parlance is not an ingenious invention of the author as it is commonly spoken in Ecuador to this day; yet it demonstrates that the most disparate of languages are not treated in isolation and instead merge to form new idiom that-while considered innovative and popularized in Europe with the emergence of Burgess' harangue novel A Clockwork Orange-helps convey the essence of the novel without eclipsing it.  

This is at the level of language. At the level of content, there is an irrefutable influence of other writers and genres of literature that further impede the taxonomy of Latin American literature. From Gabriel García Márquez's veneration of Faulkner to Borges' incessant allusions to 1001 Arabian Nights, the amount of intertextuality in these novels is overwhelming. Cinema is also a great influence on Latin American writers; particularly those categorized as ‘post-modern', such as Manuel Puig. In his novel El beso de la mujer araña (The Kiss of the Spider Woman), Puig tells the story of two prisoners incarcerated during Argentina's ‘Dirty War': one is accused of actions against the government and the other of homosexual actions against minors. One way in which the characters momentarily escape the reality of their imprisonment is through the recollection and telling of previous films they have seen. As a narrative device, there is a substantial amount that can be inferred by the choice of films-such as the B-Horror Cat People (1942)-in relation to the development of the relationship between the two cellmates. However, film in this novel transcends its quotidian use as a topic of idle conversation and proceeds to comment on the issue of homosexuality in Latin America. Throughout the retelling of the films, Valentín (the political prisoner) interrupts the narrator (Molina - the gay inmate) to ask questions about the details of the misé-en-scene and other cinematic particularities; similarly, when Molina relates his own history, Valentín's questions regarding homosexual stereotypes disrupt Molina's personal narrative. One immediately notices a parallel between the level of curiosity Valentín invests in the film and that which he displays towards gay culture; it is most likely that this is symptomatic of his exposure to something new. However, once the reader becomes aware of this, the indelible understanding that the aforementioned protagonist is also steering the narrative in a direction that accommodates his biases and forces one to reconsider the nature of Valentín's questions. That is to say, homosexuality, like cinema, is treated as a subjective interpretation of the viewer/listener rather than something objective.

Puig's deceptively simple novel now becomes an emblematic representation of ‘Latin American literature' insofar as, akin to the discussion of homosexuality, it is something that cannot be defined according to conventional definitions due to its protean nature. Its minute components (influences, artistic movements, sociopolitics...) are usually addressed by academics in scrupulous studies because to attempt to aggregate these elements into a coherent whole would be tantamount to finding a single answer to the meaning of life. It is the inchoate state of this literature that invites its reader to engage with each novel as a work that the individual can define as he/she pleases and which compels this writer to rename the ‘Latin American Novel' as merely ‘Novels written in or about Latin America'.   

Be sure to see the mesmerizing adaptation of The Kiss of the Spider Woman which is finally being released on DVD on October 21^st.