"Book reviews have never helped me. Most of them erred in their interpretations and their work has been a waste of time"
About this Quote
Puig’s jab at book reviews isn’t just writerly grousing; it’s a declaration of aesthetic independence from a gatekeeping ecosystem that often rewards legibility over ambition. The line lands because it refuses the polite fiction that criticism is always a helpful bridge between art and audience. Puig treats reviews as an industry of misreadings: not merely “I disagree,” but “your entire method fails me.” That absolutism is the point. It’s a defensive weapon sharpened by experience, especially for a novelist whose work thrives on tone, camp, melodrama, and the porous border between “high” literature and popular media.
The subtext is a power struggle. Reviews don’t just interpret; they brand. They decide whether a book is serious, frivolous, political, “Latin American” in the approved way, or insufficiently aligned with whatever critical fashion is reigning. Puig, who built novels out of dialogue, gossip, cinema, and the textures of everyday speech, was always vulnerable to being flattened into categories: experimental but “too pop,” queer-coded but not safely representational, political but not dutifully didactic. When he says reviews “have never helped,” he’s rejecting the idea that validation arrives from above.
Context matters: mid-century literary culture could be brutal to writers who didn’t perform the right kind of gravitas, and Puig’s work (think Kiss of the Spider Woman) invites moral and ideological projection. His complaint about “waste of time” is also self-protective pragmatism: reading reviews becomes a way of letting strangers co-author your confidence. Puig’s intent is clear: the book is the argument; the rest is noise.
The subtext is a power struggle. Reviews don’t just interpret; they brand. They decide whether a book is serious, frivolous, political, “Latin American” in the approved way, or insufficiently aligned with whatever critical fashion is reigning. Puig, who built novels out of dialogue, gossip, cinema, and the textures of everyday speech, was always vulnerable to being flattened into categories: experimental but “too pop,” queer-coded but not safely representational, political but not dutifully didactic. When he says reviews “have never helped,” he’s rejecting the idea that validation arrives from above.
Context matters: mid-century literary culture could be brutal to writers who didn’t perform the right kind of gravitas, and Puig’s work (think Kiss of the Spider Woman) invites moral and ideological projection. His complaint about “waste of time” is also self-protective pragmatism: reading reviews becomes a way of letting strangers co-author your confidence. Puig’s intent is clear: the book is the argument; the rest is noise.
Quote Details
| Topic | Book |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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