Manuel Puig meets Garbo
Posted January 5, 2007 by John Menick
While completing his first book
…and saw, less than two feet away, the exquisite face of Greta Garbo. Even before he saw her, he heard her, or rather he heard a familiar cavernous contralto voice requesting a ticket to Paris, France. Manuel’s seamless impersonation of Garbo was no doubt enhanced by the visitation; Guillermo Cabrera Infante describes how Manuel’s imitations forever changed the experience of seeing Garbo in dazzling black in white: she became a mere copy of Manuel’s imitation… Minutes later she returned to the counter: “Are you sure this plane is going to Paris, France?” Manuel offered to carry her suitcases… “The woman is tired,” she cried suddenly, handing him a tip and inspiring a lifelong mannerism of referring to himself as “la woman.” Then she disappeared into the bowels of the plane, and “the myth became human, vulnerable and anonymous all at one time, Garbo eclipsed by the masses, the gestures of countless individuals also vanishing in a similar airport, or railway station.”
From Suzanne Jill Levine’s Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman
