Dialogs in the Plot-Artistic System of the Novels by Manuel Puig

Abstract. The purpose of this work is to analyze the dialogical component of the work of the Argentine postmodernist writer Manuel Puig, whose literary style was especially influenced by cinema. The article examines the dialogues without the author’s word that have become characteristic of M. Puig, as well as monologic statements in the first person (mainly letters), with the help of which a dialogue between the characters is also built. The theoretical basis was the work of Russian researchers in the field of artistic speech and foreign papers devoted to the work of M. Puig. The article shows that the dialogue in the novels of M. Puig is a clash of different worldviews that moves the plot and stimulates the heroes’ development; dialogue is also the main means of achieving an understanding between the Self and the Other. It is concluded that dialogism in the author’s creative system manifests itself not only at the level of compositional forms, but also at the level of the text as a whole, being its ontological basis. In addition, in order to understand himself and the other, the author enters into an indirect dialogue with the reader through the appeal of monologic statements to an invisible interlocutor and the appearance of a “silent bystander” in dialogues.

Keywords: Manuel Puig, novel, monologue, dialogue, indirect dialogue, dialogism, silent bystander.