"Never lose a fight on a first date or that will be the end of it."
DROWN
Junot Díaz
This collection of short stories--Díaz's debut--was published the same year as Infinite Jest, and it's easy to imagine that this jagged, acclaimed diamond of a collection was lost in all the noise and literary-circle bedlam the latter book generated. Still, with homes like The Paris Review and The New Yorker, these stories must have invoked quite a bit of well-deserved praise. Written in a smooth, conversational Spanglish, with occasional lightning-fire sentences sprinkled throughout, the ten stories here open the door to a world of Dominicans and Dominican-Americans, the immigrant experience, absent fathers and virile, lovelorn teenagers, Santo Domingo and its squalor, New Jersey as a playground for aimless and violent and self-destructive love affairs, and the knowing humor threaded into lives lived in poverty and uncertainty. "Aurora" is maybe my favorite, after "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie". "Negocios" is an immigrant epic poem. And "Aguantando" damn near broke my heart.
I'd read his latest short story collection, This Is How You Lose Her, and while the latter is tighter and more assured and defter in its prose, there's more sprawl here. More wild flailing in character with the people populating these epics-in-miniature. I don't imagine people like Yunior got a lot of play in the publishing world or saw a lot of daylight on bookshelves. It says something that, even in the latest collection of stories, he is still that much of a novelty.
Now all that's left is to tackle his most famous The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and I'll have completed the Díaz triumvirate.
Junot Díaz
This collection of short stories--Díaz's debut--was published the same year as Infinite Jest, and it's easy to imagine that this jagged, acclaimed diamond of a collection was lost in all the noise and literary-circle bedlam the latter book generated. Still, with homes like The Paris Review and The New Yorker, these stories must have invoked quite a bit of well-deserved praise. Written in a smooth, conversational Spanglish, with occasional lightning-fire sentences sprinkled throughout, the ten stories here open the door to a world of Dominicans and Dominican-Americans, the immigrant experience, absent fathers and virile, lovelorn teenagers, Santo Domingo and its squalor, New Jersey as a playground for aimless and violent and self-destructive love affairs, and the knowing humor threaded into lives lived in poverty and uncertainty. "Aurora" is maybe my favorite, after "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie". "Negocios" is an immigrant epic poem. And "Aguantando" damn near broke my heart.
I'd read his latest short story collection, This Is How You Lose Her, and while the latter is tighter and more assured and defter in its prose, there's more sprawl here. More wild flailing in character with the people populating these epics-in-miniature. I don't imagine people like Yunior got a lot of play in the publishing world or saw a lot of daylight on bookshelves. It says something that, even in the latest collection of stories, he is still that much of a novelty.
Now all that's left is to tackle his most famous The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and I'll have completed the Díaz triumvirate.