Animadversion

"Fuck that bitch. Fuck all bitches."

You would be forgiven for figuring that that's some jackass on Twitter, but it's actually Junot Diaz. And as far as I'm concerned, it sums up Junot Diaz (or at least his recent work).

You may (but probably will not recall) that about this time last year, I was disappointed not only to find myself on my way to Europe with a current New Yorker has a Diaz story in the fiction section, but to find that the other recent issue that I'd grabbed also had a Diaz story. I was already sick of Diaz stories--because they're basically 5-10 pages of "fuck all bitches," and here I was with two more of them. When I could have had something readable to get me through those flights and train rides.

My M.O. to keep up with the New Yorker was to read each issue on the metro, as I got it. Which usually meant that I would toss it in a pile before getting to the fiction section. I love the fiction section--it was, at least in concept, a treat--but if I was going to keep up, I had to put the old issue down when I got a new one. Since my subscription lapsed, I've steadily made my way through that pile of unread New Yorker fiction, most of which I have enjoyed. There was a great story by Zadie Smith, and an okay one by a forgettable writer that I was nonetheless glad I hadn't read before I got my own wisdom teeth pulled. And then, yesterday, I grabbed an old issue--it would have been at least the third that summer, since there were two that ended up in Europe with me--with Junot Diaz.

And I knew the second I read the first few sentences that it was Junot Diaz. He's pretty formulaic: dude sleeps with lots of women and speaks derogatorily of them, but nonetheless has a soul because he's hurt that the one he actually cared about has left. Every time. This is what the man wins prizes for? I should point out, again, that I have friends whose literary judgment I trust who love Junot Diaz and maintain that I must read "The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao," and I probably will. But can we stop with the more recent stuff? We get it: your characters--Yunior in particular--sleep with a lot of women and treat them as disposable, and Diaz passes it off as literature because he anchors it in a cultural context. I mean, I could do that--drop a bunch of salty language and anchor it in culture--except that Gary Shteyngart has already cornered the market on that within my ethnicity. The difference is, Shteyngart's profanity-laced, over-the-top writing is nonetheless worth reading, whereas with Diaz I'm still wondering why the f* he's wasting my time.

Would you want to be that writer? Would you want someone to blindly pick up a story and within seconds know that it's you, not because it's beautiful but because it's formulaic in its language and misogyny? Also, dude got what he wished for (i.e., for someone to explode a bomb Boston); are you happy, fucker? And who's the fiction editor at the New Yorker who decided to publish at least three of these in one summer, much less at all?

***
"Stupid Fucking Bird" was too bad. Not because it was bad--it was good--but because there was some really good stuff in it--great lines, great moments, and a generally great concept--but there was just, disproportionately, too much play for the amount of good stuff. I cannot recommend it. After the first act, I thought it was worth it. After the second, I was having doubts. After the third, I couldn't with a clean conscience send anyone to give up two and a half hours to that play (which, again, is too bad, because there were some very cool ideas). By the time I was waiting for the metro--waiting 25 minutes for the metro, with speakers that were consistently emitting loud static, a man who smelled of urine trying to chat me up about my headphones, and a shitty Junot Diaz story about a bunch of dudes who somehow get a lot of women to sleep with them--I felt more than certain that the play had not been worth it. When it comes down to "maybe it would have been worth it if I'd gotten a train right away," the play has to do better; I was stuck for a while after "The Real Thing," but that was worth every minute of metro wait.