MANUEL PUIG, Argentine writer, born (d. 1990); Gay themes and motifs are suggested in several Manuel Puig’s eight novels, and in the best known of them, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Gay desire is central to the fiction. Puig was born in General Villegas, an isolated town in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. As a child, bored by the provincialism of his surroundings, the young Puig would go to the local movie house five nights a week to be entertained by the glamour of Hollywood movies.