SOURCE: “Life as a B-Movie,” in Nation, Vol. 214, No. 1, January 3, 1972, pp. 26-7.

In the following review, De Feo lauds Puig's Betrayed by Rita Hayworth as “a funny, poignant, perceptive piece of fiction which is not overwhelmed by its adventurous techniques.”

In The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West imagined a world populated by people who seemed to be “on,” acting out rather than simply living their lives. Some of them became so immersed in their roles that they often found themselves play-acting even in quite serious and threatening real-life situations. Life had become one big B-movie. The world in which they existed (a surrealistic Hollywood) did not shake them out of their dream lives, for it was as artificial and ridiculous as their adopted personalities.

Manuel Puig's characters, who live in a small Argentine town, are not as badly off as West's, not nearly as pathetic or lost...