Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages

Book excerpt: In his first novel in English, Manuel Puig strikes a balance between irony and sympathy as he tells of the dealings of two men whose deceptive reminiscences recall those of the characters in his better-known Kiss of the Spider Woman. Larry, a down-out-out writer, is paid to push a wheelchair-bound Argentine political exile, Ramirez, around Greenwich Village. Through their journeys and their conversations about sex and politics, we witness the collision of two "solitary fantasy systems," revealing the men to be enmeshed in the lies that make up their bitter, shadowy symbiosis.