Drown, Junot Díaz

For quite some time, Amazon has been recommending that I read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and, at this point, I feel as if I’ve trained Amazon well enough to trust it. I was rather convinced I owned this book and that I even knew where I managed to hide it, but when I went hunting through my stacks I came up empty handed. Realizing, then, that I’d not be reading the book quite yet, I decided to dive into Junot Díaz’s debut, a collection of short stories entitled Drown. The stories center around the experiences of various men (and boys), with a heavy emphasis on the immigration experience. For the most part this book had me wondering about the hype and, occasionally, it left me cold.

Authenticity issues: I think it’s challenging to narrate from a child’s point of view and I certainly find myself questioning the authenticity of a child narrator’s voice from time to time. I’ve not yet been able to articulate what I think constitutes authenticity and I suspect it’s deeply personal, depending a lot upon the kind of child you were and the kind of children you continue to surround yourself with. However, just one story into Díaz’s collection and I was already having the debate, which is a good enough sign that I found the narrative problematic enough not to be fully immersed. Other stories, like “Fiesta, 1980” felt a little more successful in this regard and, fortunately, there is a wide range of narrators so it is not as if this was a collection-wide issue for me.

An (irrational) aversion: If I weren’t writing this so late I would say, with absolute certainty, that no fewer than 100 MFA programs had students churning out stories on the Raymond Carver model of short story. The thing is, it’s not even so much that I think Raymond Carver is bad, but he certainly never thrilled me so I’m not particularly moved to see any number writers pumping out Raymond Carver with a light sheen of something-ness (be it race, gender, religion, neighborhood, region, etc.) being the only deviations. The first story, “Ysrael” felt to be the most Carver-esque of the bunch, although I certainly felt the influence.* Other stories in the collection are a fairly light wash and didn’t feel altogether complete.

A fury: There are a lot of words out there not to be uttered in polite company because they are offensive, hurtful slurs. Ultimately, I think that whether or not these words can be used or reclaimed is something to be decided upon only by members of that group. I have lived in Dominican neighborhoods and taken trains with Dominican kids and teens. I am fully cognizant of what kind of language they use. However, the language that Diaz chooses to insert to capture these characters is a deliberate construct and I’m not convinced the language he picked is necessary. Further, it’s somewhat telling that use of slurs used against certain people is somehow meant to be indicative of racism, but dropping it casually into conversation is not. Frankly, Díaz isn’t Flannery O’Connor. A reader can’t just blow past him with a “Well, but times have changed.” By the point we were a few times in, I stopped to do my dishes. I cleaned my living room floors. I scrubbed the bathroom toilet. Cleaning is one of those things I hate to do most, but here I was doing it because I was so profoundly disturbed and firmly cast out from the story reading experience.

This book really made me wish I were the kind of reader that could give myself permission to walk away from books, but I'm still at the point where I convince myself if I just keep going, a book will get better. I really wanted to love this Drown. After all, I don’t think I’ve nestled down with short stories since Story magazine folded quite some time ago. And certainly, a lot of people loved this collection. Even people who are passionate about books I love. But I simply wasn’t blown away enough by to push past the points that disturbed me.

Rating: 5/10**

Genre: Literary Fiction

Pages: 208

* I tend not to read reviews or quotes on books I buy because I don’t want to be unduly biased, but if only I had I probably would have approached more cautiously. After all, there was pretty much a note from a reviewer stating “Someone from the Carver School Ahead.”

** Really, I’d almost love to give Drown a 4/10, but it was technically proficient in ways that a book like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters was not, and there are stories that are quite memorable, at least in part.

Fables: Sons of Empire, Bill Willingham

I wasn’t a really big fan of the Fables series when I first started reading it which surprised me a bit. After all, I was a voracious fairy tale reader when I was quite young, having devoured all of the “color” fairy tale books in my elementary school’s library in a matter of month. I think part of the reason behind that is that it seemed to me, at least in the beginning, Willingham was only skimming the surface of his fantastic character. I did think the interplay Adversary, the Homeland and Fabletown had a lot of potential, but much of the early volumes felt like soap opera. Within the past few volumes, however, we’ve gotten to know many of the characters on a deeper level and the struggle between the Adversary and the fables has intensified.

I must admit that gruff Bigby is one of my favorite characters in the series so I was happy to see him as a central focus again. I’m really enjoying watching his and Snow White’s pack of children learn, grow and become distinctive entities. I also thought casting Hansel (of Hansel and Gretel fame) as an ascetic, Puritan-like former witch hunter was a brilliant expansion of the original character. Sometimes it seems as if the ones Willingham selects are classic fables in name only, so it’s always nice to see more depth.

In the beginning of the series I was definitely reading to see if they got better and because I’d bought a few volumes at the beginning (since there’s nothing I hate more than discovering I love a comic book series only to run out of issues at hand all too quickly). I very nearly didn’t buy any more, but became convinced after a visit to Jim Hanley’s, that maybe I hadn’t given the series enough time. After all, I’d picked up DMZ, Y: The Last Man and Transmetropolitan within a similar time frame and could not put those down. But I’m glad I gave Fables more time to grow on me.

Rating: 9/10

Genre: Comic book/graphic novel, drama, fantasy

Pages: 200

The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon

After being made the executor of a former lover’s will, Oedipa Mas stumbles across a postal conspiracy. Because of the grand conspiracy/mystery/journey of discovery I couldn’t help but be reminded on some levels of Umberto Eco’s In the Name of the Rose, but Pynchon plunges the reader into much less stable ground. In The Crying of Lot 49, the world Mas inhabits is a little bit off. With character names reminiscent of hygiene products (Emory Bortz) and historical figures (Genghis Cohen) and characters and interactions that border on the surreal (although Pynchon’s deft use of language prevents them from seeming shallow or stereotypical), the atmosphere very much resembles a waking dream.

At one point, as the depth of the conspiracy appears to expand and Mas finally finds herself alone, she convinces herself to go out into the night and simply go where the story takes her. I was all too happy to follow along. I suspect individuals who need to have signposts in books (Where have I been? Where am I going? Where am I right now?) would be rather frustrated by The Crying of Lot 49. It is one of those novels not so much about plot or character, but about a meandering journey. There is no neat conclusion, not even a massive character revelation. Is this really a conspiracy? Is it delusion? Is it an ex-lover’s practical joke? Knowing what Mas takes away towards the end might depend in part on “What comes next,” but if Pynchon had any opinions on the matter, he deliberately chooses to withhold that information from the reader.

When it comes down to it, I’m not even entirely sure that I consider this a wholly satisfying book, although I immensely enjoyed Pynchon’s incredibly vivid prose and sense of humor and play. Reading it, I felt a bit like I was watching a Goddard film . . . appreciating it, but skimming along the surface of it just the same. But I’ve found this to be the case with a number of postmodern novels, and I can’t say that there’s a huge trend as to which ones I really dig into and which I do not. By the time I started to sink into The Crying of Lot 49 just a little bit, it was over. I do, however, feel this is one of those books that must be read more than once so I’ll surely be back again.

Rating: 7/10

Genre: Literary fiction

Pages: 183

On Haiti and Heroes

“In overthrowing me, you have done no more than cut down the trunk of the tree of the black liberty in St-Domingue-it will spring back from the roots, for they are numerous and deep.”

– Toussaint L’Ouverture

For some reason today I was contemplating who my first black superhero was and it dawned on me it was probably Toussaint L’Ouverture. Ever since I first read about him in Trinidadian author’s C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins, I have been fascinated. The white savior narrative is so deeply ingrained in American culture that it was beyond refreshing to come across a black revolutionary leader, and one who orchestrated the defeat of the French while under Napoleon’s command no less.

For obvious reasons, a lot of people are interested in Haiti and that book is definitely a good place to start for those looking for a little Haitian history. It is certainly dense, but I found it a swift read, even as an undergraduate (I first read the book as part of an independent study in college on Haiti).

As far as takes on the current Haitian situation, I found these personal tales of expats exceptionally moving (I also recommend that people check out more Danticat because her writing is lovely and, well, Arcade Fire tends to blow me away, although for some reason I wasn’t familiar with them until I stumbled across them on Ta-Nahesi Coates’s blog):

Author Edwidge Danticat memorializes her cousin Maxo who died in the Haiti quake.

Singer Régine Chassagne discusses her homeland.