Junot Diaz is a brilliant writer. I really love that the sensitivity of his writing, and the fluid but exact way he uses words. It creates a clarity of emotions that strikes me as so real! I haven't read his most recent short stories, but this article, written in preparation for his newest collection, made me really think about one theme in his writing that really resounded with me in Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
In each of these settings, he employs a first person narrator dealing with sexuality and problematic relationships, with women and also with their own over-bearing, aggressive fathers. Yunior and other of Diaz’s characters resent the stereotypical latin male, usually exemplified in their fathers. These men usually judge masculinity through the numerical scale of how women they have had sex with. These troubled central characters hate the prospect of becoming self-centered jerks, and then they do it.
I love his writing, and I find these characters to be terribly tortured. But at the same time, there are some themes of masculinity that I just can't really relate to. There are some male authors who I say, "gosh, I love you, but I know if we met up you would not be able to relate to me, because you would see me only in this way: CHICK." I feel that way about a lot of my favorite authors, like Haruki Murakami and Chuck Palahniuk. I love them particularly because they write about gender, and I relate to the way that their characters grapple with the difficulties and inadequacies of their gendered identities.
But in regards to his advice about not writing anything until you are 29 and have lived life: Junot Diaz, there is no way I can take advice from you! You are is too unhappy.
Doesn't he seem unhappy? All of his characters seem vaguely unhappy (except for Oscar's sister Leila, and go her and the good decisions she makes for herself!), and this problem often centers around their relationships with women.
The troubled relationship that these characters have between their desire to respect women and form meaningful relationships and their desire for sexual conquest is a repetitive theme. Oscar, who is 300 lbs., considers himself, and is considered by many others in his life, a disgusting monster. Yet, I was particularly struck when, ¾ of the way into the book Oscar is working as a teacher at the school and describes having sexual fantasies about another teacher, saying he would have sex with her, but that she "wasn't hot enough to date." Clearly, this "objective" scale of human attractiveness that wends its way into our evaluations of human worth is profoundly marginalizing, and yet still accepted by those who are marginalized by it! Yunior, the "I" narrator, keeps saying how sad he is that he cannot seem to not cheat on his girlfriends, but he somehow does it every time, and is eventually left heartbroken because of his own behavior.
His characters hate this kind of comparative masculinity, but they are still subject to it, and that it is a tragedy that I relate to in the way I think about my relationship with femininity (I hate femininity! It is oppressive! Fuck this system! But…I still see it as a part of me, and the way I interface with the world. I still desire to be attractive…) Junot Diaz makes these people into characters rather than omniscient narrators because he wants us to see their flaws. And they are just a little bit annoying and whiny about issues that they really should be able to deal with themselves (stop fucking other chicks, etc.).
Junot Diaz writes great, unhappy fiction, and that is not what I want to write. I want to write happy fiction. I want to write about success, and finding coping strategies, and finding adulthood in a very real, tangible sense. Yes, it's just a story, really - success. Success is a constructed narrative that must be constantly maintained in real life situations (you have to just keep telling yourself, I am an adult! I must make good decisions! I am an adult! I must make good decisions!), but that is the kind of human I aspire to become, and the kind of writer that I want to be. There are several writers who I find like this. Less angry, more wise writers, who write about relationships and personal growth in a way that feels very realistic to me. These writers are people like Elizabeth Berg and Alice Monroe. I don't know if I like them better than Diaz and Murakami. There is something so sexy and funny about vaguely misogynistic, highly imaginative prose (it's true! these writers do seem more imaginative than the female ones, partly it is the magical realism they use, which I love, consistently).
Junot Diaz tells writers not to do anything until 29 so they can practice fucking women and then being sad about it, gaining lots of perspective, and realizing that they really are making some bad decisions (whether or not they choose to change that behavior). Perspective makes for being a good writer. But, because I am going to become an adult sooner, I don't have to practice that. I'm planning on gaining my perspective precociously through my own conscious choices.
No comments:
Post a Comment