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writing. In this novel (and in others by Puig), information is “economized ,” in the sense that family genealogies and relationships are omitted , characters barely outlined, and linear narratives dispersed. Puig’s parsimonious approach to information was a complicating factor in his attempts to publish his early works, which, as I have noted, came under suspicious scrutinity for their apparent reticence, their practice of signifying something that went unspecified—for not saying more. This reticence made Puig’s novels interpretable as “treacherous” texts in the sense that they were not to be trusted. 1. BETRAYED BY THE MARKETPLACE The publication history of La traición is a cogent example of the scrutiny Puig endured in the 1960s book market. Once it was published in June 1968 by a small press in Buenos Aires, Editorial Jorge Álvarez, both the Spanish censorship authorities and Barral himself were forced to reconsider the value of Puig’s work. The dilemma faced by censors became one of moral rectitude (the book was immoral and obscene) vs. economic profit (the book was published by a competitor). Similarly, the dilemma faced by Barral was one of queer aesthetics (his dislike of Puig’s overt display of “faggotry”) vs. publishing competition (in 1970 Jorge Álvarez ceded the Puig contract to Editorial Sudamericana). As had been the case with other Latin American novels, the Franco regime would not allow Puig’s novels to be published in Spain until the case for their “usefulness” and profitability could be clearly made. This is not to say that profit making overruled the prohibition on publishing any work that the censors rejected. But economic success and international market recognition became helpful tools with which publishers like Barral could negotiate. Fortunately, Puig’s belated appearance on Spain’s literary market coincided with the implementation of the new censorship rules. As we have seen, for fervent franquistas such as Vernet, the regime’s relaxation of these rules was itself a betrayal of the guiding principles of Alzamiento Nacional, which had been “revised” during the 1960’s economic expansion (Labanyi 207). These tensions between censorship and economics, which became endemic to the publishing industry of the 1960s, and, in the end, determined Puig’s literary career, were summarized in the Spanish censor’s report of 1966. Puig himself tried to “cash in” on having been censored in Spain. When he saw the manuscript Barral had submitted back from the censors “all underlined in red,” he anticipated that the fact of having been censored in Franco’s Spain would work elsewhere as a 146 The Censorship Files symbolic badge of honor. It was “a conflict [that] had created some curiosity” and would generate interest in his work on the part of other publishers (Puig, “Writers and Repression” 30–31). This proved to be the case when he first sought to publish his novel in England, Mexico, Argentina, and the United States. There was “curiosity” in all these places. But as the months went by, Puig was to realize that the symbolic capital derived from having been censored in Franco’s Spain was, in the end, not necessarily sufficient or even helpful. Prospective publishers in London (Hamilton) and New York (Knopf) not only disagreed about the investment value attached to censorship; they also concurred with the Spanish censor’s evaluation of the novel. As Puig confessed in a letter to the renowned literary critic Emir Rodríguez Monegal, the publishers ’ reactions to his novel did not differ from the Spanish censors’: “according to them the novel was unbearably confusing, filled with characters that are impossible to follow, since you can’t tell if they’re speaking or thinking. . . . What sort of divine donkeys are these people who are in charge?” (Levine 186). Why was it so important to these readers to be able to decode La traición? Why did the “divine donkeys” need all the characters and story lines in the novel to be fully and clearly identifiable? Certainly, Puig was not the only Latin American author who made use of fragmented narratives, nor was he the only one who resorted to multiple narrative perspectives. The fact that the Spanish censor’s report and prospective publishers elsewhere concurred in viewing Puig’s novel with a degree of suspicion perhaps indicates that the grounds for their dislike for Puig lay elsewhere. As is often the case when people write reports on books, what is said in the report is not necessarily what the reporter had in mind. Reports of...

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