Set in New York City in the 1950's, Valentino's Hair is a short novel about a Puerto Rican barber, Facundo Nieves, and his lame young son Lupe. The focus of the novel is a series of confessional chapters in which the barber tells about a day in 1926 when he cut Rudolph Valentino's hair in an exclusive Manhattan hotel. In Rudolph Valentino, Facundo identifies a persona he envies, "a man who had probably made love to every woman he touched." However, the Valentino who Facundo Nieves meets is a disturbed, emotionally haggard, and philosophical man who carefully watches Facundo's fine hands work and comments that the barber is cutting away at the actor's life too, "time leaving me like moments falling to the floor." / When the screen idol dies a month later in a New York hospital, the barber at first feels guilty, sure that he has contributed in some way to Valentino's premature death. But after visiting a bruja, a neighborhood witch, the barber discovers something even more frightening: the hair is a powerful aphrodisiac. And so, Facundo embarks upon the ignoble cause of using the hair to seduce a young American woman whom he has lusted after, a woman who does not love him but who is helplessly drawn to Facundo through his use of the magical hair. The outcome of this relationship borders on horror. / The novel explores Lupe's relationship with his now aged father and his discovery of his father's secret practice of sympathetic magic, the environment of the barber's unique world, the various mythologies associated with hair, and Puerto Rican family and culture. But the barber's voice serves as the anchor, revealing psychological turmoil and inevitably leading to the conclusions that innocence can be lost in both the real and mystical world and that we are all morally corruptible and subject to temptation. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-12, Section: A, page: 4125. / Major Professor: Jerome H. Stern. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990. / Set in New York City in the 1950's, Valentino's Hair is a short novel about a Puerto Rican barber, Facundo Nieves, and his lame young son Lupe. The focus of the novel is a series of confessional chapters in which the barber tells about a day in 1926 when he cut Rudolph Valentino's hair in an exclusive Manhattan hotel. In Rudolph Valentino, Facundo identifies a persona he envies, "a man who had probably made love to every woman he touched." However, the Valentino who Facundo Nieves meets is a disturbed, emotionally haggard, and philosophical man who carefully watches Facundo's fine hands work and comments that the barber is cutting away at the actor's life too, "time leaving me like moments falling to the floor." / When the screen idol dies a month later in a New York hospital, the barber at first feels guilty, sure that he has contributed in some way to Valentino's premature death. But after visiting a bruja, a neighborhood witch, the barber discovers something even more frightening: the hair is a powerful aphrodisiac. And so, Facundo embarks upon the ignoble cause of using the hair to seduce a young American woman whom he has lusted after, a woman who does not love him but who is helplessly drawn to Facundo through his use of the magical hair. The outcome of this relationship borders on horror. / The novel explores Lupe's relationship with his now aged father and his discovery of his father's secret practice of sympathetic magic, the environment of the barber's unique world, the various mythologies associated with hair, and Puerto Rican family and culture. But the barber's voice serves as the anchor, revealing psychological turmoil and inevitably leading to the conclusions that innocence can be lost in both the real and mystical world and that we are all morally corruptible and subject to temptation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_68142 |
| Creators | Sapia, Yvonne Veronica |
| Publisher | Florida State University Libraries |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
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