Putti’s Pudding is the final collaborative work by American writer and actor Cookie Mueller, and her husband, Italian artist Vittorio Scarpati. A deeply personal artist’s book created in the final year of their lives, published shortly before both died from AIDS-related complications, it pairs Mueller’s text with 45 felt-tip pen drawings by Scarpati. By the summer of 1989, Scarpati had lost the ability to speak and was confined to a hospital bed, drawing on notepads while connected to pneumothorax machines that kept him breathing. What began as a way to pass time became a record of illness and perception at the edge of life. His unexpectedly playful drawings chart the physical and psychological terrain of AIDS, and Mueller’s writing meets these images with her characteristic mix of clarity, wit, and emotional precision. The result is an unflinching record of the harsh and uncertain reality of living with AIDS in the 1980s.