“Un bodrio monumental, sin precedentes”: the genesis of Humedad relativa ambiente: 95% in Manuel Puig’s letters

Abstract

After the death of Manuel Puig on July 22, 1990, one of the first unpublished texts to be released was Humedad relativa ambiente: 95%, a novel project on which he allegedly had been working until his last breath. However, reading his correspondence housed in the Puig Archive quickly revealed something different. This article aims to trace the creative process of Humedad relativa ambiente: 95% in light of the letters that Manuel Puig sent to his family as testimony of its first stage of development, as well as its early dissemination among friends and colleagues. The reading of the epistolary is not only a fundamental contribution to the study of the creation of this novel project, but also to problematize its first abandonment. Neither finished nor abandoned, this novel project accompanied Puig throughout his literary career and functioned as a laboratory for experimentation for many of the themes and procedures that he developed in his published texts, at the same time that it remained an inexhaustible source of resources available for their use.