Courage and experimentation in the novel

Rita Hayworth’s Betrayal may be Puig’s most important novel. It was the first, and on which the pillars of what comes next are based: thematically, because of its ambiguity, because of the lives of people who do not identify with society, who feel like others, and who are not always accepted. in their time. ; and formally, by adopting different strategies in its writing, distributing it in two parts and sixteen chapters, in which an overwhelming narrative experiment is carried out. All this stems from a cruel sentimentality.

I returned to The Betrayal of Rita Hayworth this week by rewatching The Lady from Shanghai on a TV platform, in which Orson Wells as the director deals with Rita’s rage to cut her hair and dye it blonde. During his re-reading, it’s never easy, I found myself again in Coronel Vallejo, a literary copy of General Villegas in Manuel Puig’s hometown, with the Pampa-like landscape and characters living in a small town, everyday society, and not always with positive attitudes. There is the marriage established by Mirta and Berto and their main character son Toto, and all the characters that are a part of their lives. Toto and Mirta always go to the town cinema, as Puig did with his mother when he was a kid. The characters in the movies they watch become the reference of their lives in the social subconscious. Especially when it comes to Toto, who doesn’t like his own reality and tries to adopt what the cinema offers him even though he presents inconsistencies that he doesn’t understand, everything can be analyzed from the perspective of the films.

Although Manuel Puig’s production coincides with the Spanish-American Explosion, his discursive style, more than ever, is radically opposed to magical realism. In his writing, the author is completely lost, only the characters speak, without telling who he is, only one or two paragraphs, dialogues with only one of the participants, the inclusion of different documents such as school or anonymous work or letter is very important to Chapter XVI. A whole stylistic display based on different narrative techniques, fragmentation and temporal distortion. A luxury for an ordinary story with hints of a drama.

All this and much more in our collaborative learning, without even a word, I told my colleagues and wrote to my Royal 202. With the contributions and discussions of the four of us, we have written a huge piece. that we live intensely and are rewarded with an A.

And why should you read this novel? Because if you like creating different characters and experimenting with narrative, you’ll enjoy it; Moreover, without losing any iota of literalness, as I believe this represents a different aspect or streak of what has always been explained or understood as the Explosion of Spanish-American literature. And of course, because in life, as in literature and cinema, there are many types of betrayal. Rita Hayworth forever.