The fictionalization of reading: didactics and politics in Kiss of the Spider Woman

Kiss of the spider woman, the novel that, according to most critics, opens the specifically political stage of Puig's work, is structured through the tension between two opposite modes of reading: in one of them reading it is an occasion for interpretation that unfolds as hermeneutic exegesis, in the other one reading appears as an experience that confuses art and life in a process of mutual affectation. These two modes of reading are embodied respectively by Valentin and Molina, the two characters in conversation in the novel, who engage in a teaching-learning process through which Valentin will end up ignoring the knowledge from which he reads to adopt Molina's vital way of reading.