58
PARTISAN REVIEW
need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible the
results of that need are. " Wouldn 't you agree that the statement applies
both to your intentions as an author and to the behavior of your
characters?
Puig:
One Hundred Per cent!
Christ:
Jose Donoso has identified two predominant prose styles in contem–
porary Latin American fiction: the
idioma personal
and the
idioma general.
In the first, typified by Sarduy, the prose is idiosyncratic and self–
consciously inventive in defining individuality while in the second ,
typified by your work, the prose style predates the narrative and is drawn
largely from documents and the like in order both to recuperate lost or
disappearing qualities of language and to express general qualities of the
characters. In short, one seems more individual or lyric and the other
seems more collective or documentary. How accurate does Donoso's
distinction seem to you?
Puig:
Well, let's say that in many cases I work with alienated languages.
But then, what language is not alienated? I work with that stuff; it's my
material. I agree with what Donoso says but one shouldn't forget that
quite often, at a second stage, I cut that stuff to measure, which implies a
transformation . Anyhow, I believe I've always used those degraded
languages in order to make them significant, to turn them into
signs,
if!
may use an impressive word.
It
may be a way of putting them at the
service of literature or vice versa. Both literature and those languages
should gain by the operation.
Christ:
In the dream interview with the reporter from
Elle,
Gladys is offered
the chance to pick the title for the interview and she says that she wants
"glamorous Hitchcockian language,
The Buenos Aires Affair... "
On the
basis of that, couldn't we say that parody is a chief element in the
idioma
general,
as you use it, and that your books are very loving parody?
Puig:
I agree in general. But parody is a word I don 't trust too much because
it carries some degree of scorn. Very seldom do I let myself go in the
direction of scorn. What's more, there's a difficulty in distinguishing
the degrees of parody in my works. Sometimes I deal with parodic
characters ; that is, characters who are mimicking some kind of remote
model, and they are a parody in themselves. It's not me who's doing the
parody. Then I've been told that
Heartbreak Tango
is a parody of serials
and that
The Buenos Aires Affair
is a parody ofdetective stories . That's not
right. At least that was not my intention . I like those two underrated
genres and I tried to use them seriously, downright artistically . God
help me.
Christ:
Borges has been arguing in favor of this
declassegenre
since the 1930s ,
