Author event: Junot Diaz

Katie D.

May 1, 2010 - 11:01 AM

"Q & A is when a community shows its quality. Eugene, I await you!"

Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, spoke at the University of Oregon on Thursday, April 29th. I attended two of his talks, one at the Clark Honors College for a small group of CHC and creative writing students, and one large event in the evening. At both events he was incredibly funny, deeply honest, and truly inspirational to an aspiring writer like myself.

I read Diaz's only novel, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, over spring break. I loved every moment of it: it is a novel that feels incredibly intimate and honest, and is both funny and tragic. Junot Diaz is Dominican but grew up in New Jersey, and as an immigrant has the experience and cadence of both places. The novel contains intimate details of the communities he knows best, and sees fit to provide only a smattering of details. His use of footnotes is truly innovative: on occasion, he deems to fill in his reader with important historical or contextual details in a way that is both condescending and deeply funny.

Aside from being totally enamored of his sarcastic yet vulnerable tone, I was hopelessly in love with the book when, in the very first chapter, he makes an offhand reference to Captain Trips. Perhaps I have not mentioned this to my readers before, but I was a fanatical follower of Stephen King for years, and Junot Diaz incorporated an incredible range of "nerd" references (Stephen King and otherwise) throughout the book. When you recognize some reference like Captain Trips, you feel yourself to be a part of the "in crowd," like catching an inside joke with friends or hearing a stranger reference part of your home town. It is as though the novel was written for you alone.

One of the many questions Diaz answered relates to this very feeling of intimacy and honesty: it was a question of audience. In my many years of writing, I have never encountered such a detailed and revealing discussion of audience in the craft of writing. Diaz, who is a professor of creative writing at MIT, walked us through the process of creating an audience. He said that you write for three audiences: the "strategic audience" relates most intimately with the characters or first-person narration of the story. In the case of Oscar Wao, this means Dominican kids in New Jersey. This strategic audience is the one you don't have explain much to: they live in your world or the world you have created, and keep you honest. He told us that the selection and presence of a strategic audience is the most important part of literature, more even than character. The second audience is the "actual audience," those who you want to engage with your book. The final group is the "real audience," which is any person who picks up the final product. You have absolutely no control over who these people are, or what they will receive from your work.

The intimacy and honesty of his writing arises directly from his strategic audience. Some references were lost on me. Some circumstances were a bit unclear. He includes Spanish phrases that go untranslated. But this means, more than anything else, that his book reads like a true, uncensored document.

I've neglected to mention up to now that Diaz is also probably the foulest-mouthed public speaker I have ever encountered. Foul in a funny way, but one that takes some getting used to. For example, when asked about the discipline of writing, he first told us that he was proof that you can be talented at something that is not easy for you: that it took him eleven years to write Oscar Wao. He continued, "the only thing that stops you from being a dope-ass m---f---er is jock-like work habits." Oof!

Someone asked about him "keeping it real" as an internationally recognized author and MIT professor. To the award, he said that if you receive a big prize like that, you do so knowing that there are hundreds of more-qualified people you were standing in for. He listed six or seven authors he would rather have seen the prize go to, including Leslie Marmon Silko (one of my favorite authors) and Octavia Butler (who I will be looking up in the immediate future). Then he said something that, to me, was very telling. He said that the huge shift in his life was moving from the Third World to the US. He said "MIT is just more US-ness. The question is 'what do you do with your privilege?' And you try to put it to good use, but it can never be enough."

I took five pages of notes during his two speeches on Thursday. As I'm reading through them now, I keep laughing out loud. Here are a couple of other quotes I wrote down:

"I'll read some, then you'll ask questions, I'll try to answer, and that's a f'n night."

"My writing isn't autobiographical. I showed the novel to my family and they said 'who the f-- are these people!?"

"The nature of art is to learn transgression. Transgression arising from critical insight. The arts are so marginalized in schools here. It matters."

"Gentlemen, the two things that will help you in life and love are community service and dancing."

"The point of reading is not "do I like it?" You're not dating it. Life and art are too complex for that simplistic 'do I like it?'"

"Approval is simplistic and often dishonest. We all know comamierdas."

"Of course I didn't expect my novel would take so long. Who sits down to a project and thinks 'I'll see you in eleven years'!?"

"The things that will save you as a writer are not what you know, it's what you read."

As I'm writing this, I am returning to that place where all good author events take me: the intense desire to jump up and do a million things. Does that make sense? Someone like Junot Diaz makes me want to start a novel, buy a plane ticket to Nepal, read amazing literature, bungee jump, learn to Tango. There is something so profoundly inspirational about meeting someone who has done great artistic things with their lives. I want to run all over my life and create more meaning, more passion.

Diaz would probably say that all these things just take those "jock-like work habits" that allow nerds like me to learn to excel at what we do. He says it take three to four hours a day of every day to be an artist, just like it takes that to be an athlete. He made that decision. So can I.

Time to go embrace my day!