Puig, Manuel. Kiss of the Spiderwoman. Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Colchie. A. Knopf, 1979. Hardcover FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, 281 pp.

Argentinean-born Manuel Puig had strong ambitions to direct films but came to write fiction featuring films instead, in a manner of literary montage, or as a motif/ theme. 

Kiss of the Spider Woman (El Beso de la Mujer Araña) consists of dialogue, inner monologue, and long footnotes providing an actual subtext. Molina, a homosexual man sentenced to eight years of prison for “corruption of minors” fulfils the archetypical role of seducer in the old Hollywood films he is obsessed by, and whose plots he knows by heart. Told to his fellow prison inmate Valentin, these films provide an escape from painful truths that remain unspoken between the two. 

“My characters have all been affected by those cinematic dreams,” Puig said once. It made this reader shed a few cinematic tears.