barely active

manuel puig was the only man brave enough to ask what would happen if alma phantom thread was a cougar and marty supreme was a performative feminist commie and also they made out sloppy style

much to be said about kotsw/odyssey parallels and how molina mythologizes, but i think there’s also a lot to be said about how much of valentin’s anecdotes and introspections are self-mythology. with molina’s accounts of her life outside prison, most everything is corroborated by third-parties (be it through her exchanges with the warden or the observations of the spy at the end of the novel). meanwhile, everything we really know about valentin is through his own account to molina (which he admits to editing to assuage his own guilts and present a better image of himself to molina) and his internal monologues (that are at least partially fabricated, evidenced by internal contradictions and some details being a bit too outlandish and dramatized to be objective). he’s an incredibly unreliable narrator and that’s only made more interesting when placed in contrast to odyseuss’ equally complicated account of his life and relationships, reckoning with his actions and wrongdoings!!