You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

Hi, this is Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

We're here today at the Mark Taper Forum to talk to Manuel Pueig, who's come into town

from Mexico for the opening of his play, The Mystery of the Rose Bouquet.

Manuel Pueig was introduced to American readers really slightly before the magic realism boom, and is not

a part of that.

His first novel published in America was betrayed by Rita Hayworth, followed rapidly

by Heartbreak Tango.

His most well-known book, Kiss of the Spider Woman, was the third book published in America,

and it's been followed by the Buenos Aires Affair, Eternal Curse on the Reader of the Spider Woman was the third book published in America, and it's been followed by

the Buenos Aires Affair, Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages, Blood of Requited Love,

Pubis Angelicus, and now there is one remaining to be translated called Perhaps the Fall of the

Tropical Night. When you started writing,

the novels became steadily, what would you say,

more dark and more perverse for the first four books,

and two of them were banned in Argentina.

Why was that?

My first trouble with censorship took place earlier even with betrayed by Rita Hayworth.

It was supposed to be published in Franco's Spain in 66 and they asked for cuts and things that discouraged the publisher and so I looked for

...