General Villegas (Argentina), 1932 – Cuernavaca (México), 1990

Flávio Aguiar

With the publication of the novel La traición de Rita Hayworth in 1968, after three years of waiting due to the veiled censorship of publishers, the Argentine writer introduced a touch of originality to the history of Hispanic-American literature. Entirely written in dialogue, the book initiates the aesthetics of a new way of narrating, intertwining fragments of radio dramas, diaries, and telephone conversations within the narrative, creating a reading effect that aims to awaken in the reader the sensation of hearing the narrated stories. This effect, termed “Puig effect” by his compatriot Ricardo Piglia, is the hallmark that persists throughout his work, which includes novels, film scripts, and plays.

His prose is also permeated by themes of eroticism, the cinematic universe focused on the fictional trajectories of Hollywood stars, psychoanalysis, and the feuilleton (e.g., Los ojos de Greta Garbo, 1993).

Almost all of his literary production occurred outside Argentina, after he went to Europe in the 1960s to study cinema. He lived in Rio de Janeiro and established deep connections with Brazil, resulting in the novel Sangue de amor correspondido (1982) and the adaptation of El beso de la mujer araña (1976) for film by Argentine-Brazilian director Hector Babenco.

The parodic style with which he develops the plots, contextualizing characters with kitsch aesthetic traits in a fantastical, pop world, received poor critical reception in the early 1970s. It was after the publication of La traición that praise began to emerge from figures such as Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Severo Sarduy, and Juan Goytisolo.

Like the Brazilian Roberto Drummond, he portrays the world through an aesthetic-political lens that incorporates the languages of mass communication into the literary plane. Other works include Boquitas pintadas (1969) and Pubis angelical (1979).