曼努埃尔·普伊格

曼努埃尔·普伊格（西班牙语：Manuel Puig，1932年12月28日—1990年7月22日），阿根廷小说家，著有小说《丽塔·海华斯的背叛》、《蜘蛛女之吻》等。

Juan Manuel Puig Delledonne (December 28, 1932 – July 22, 1990), commonly called Manuel Puig, was an Argentine author and LGBTQ activist. Among his best-known novels are La traición de Rita Hayworth (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, 1968), Boquitas pintadas (Heartbreak Tango, 1969), and El beso de la mujer araña (Kiss of the Spider Woman, 1976) which was adapted into the film released in 1985, directed by the Argentine-Brazilian director Héctor Babenco; and a Broadway musical in 1993.

Early life, education and early career

Puig was born in General Villegas, Buenos Aires Province. Since there was no high school in General Villegas, his parents sent him to Buenos Aires in 1946. Puig attended Colegio Ward in Villa Sarmiento (Morón County). This is when he began to read systematically, beginning with a collection of texts by Nobel Prize winners. A classmate named Horacio, in whose home Puig rented accommodation when he first moved to Buenos Aires City introduced him to readings from the school of psychoanalysis. The first novel that he read was The Pastoral Symphony by André Gide; he also read Hermann Hesse, Aldous Huxley, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Thomas Mann.

Horacio also introduced Puig to European cinema. After seeing Quai des Orfèvres (1947), he decided that he wanted to be a film director. To prepare for his chosen career, he learned Italian, French, and German, which were considered "the new languages of cinema". He was advised to study engineering in order to specialize in sound-on-film but did not consider this to be the right choice. In 1950, he enrolled in the University of Buenos Aires Faculty of Architecture but only took classes for six months. In 1951, Puig switched to the School of Philosophy. He was a diligent student, although he struggled with subjects such as Latin. When he graduated, he was already working in film as an archivist and editor in Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. However, the world of Hollywood and the stars that had captivated him during his childhood now disappointed him; the exceptions were Marilyn Monroe and Gloria Swanson.

A note in the magazine Radiolandia about the upcoming premiere of the film Deshonra prompted Puig to try and meet its director Daniel Tinayre, whose comedy La vendedora de fantasías he admired. Since the director denied him access to the set, he spoke to the actress Fanny Navarro, who played the main role, without Tinayre's permission. He felt no sympathy for her since she supported Juan Domingo Perón, who had prohibited the importation of American films into Argentina. Navarro sent him to another actress of the cast, Herminia Franco, who got him in. Shortly after, he began to work in Alex laboratories.

In 1953, Puig did his obligatory military service in the area of Aeronautics, working as a translator.

Writing career

In the 1960s, Manuel Puig moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, La traición de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies and also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña).

Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools.