Junot Díaz

I'm not a big fiction reader: I love stories and language, but I rarely know who and what to read. I spend most of my time reading up on music and film, which consumes my life, so I just haven't found the time to truly uncover the novel. But now that my sister-in-law works for a literary agency in the publishing industry, I think I should take a better swing at it. I do cherish what few contemporary writers I have investigated, like Walter Mosley, but I also find clunkers that just aren't for me. Perhaps when I find my Christgau of the literary world, I'll have a better ratio of success.

Thankfully, I may have found another writer to dive in to. In Sunday's Star-Ledger, Mosley is quoted naming Junot Díaz's Drown "a masterpiece," which piqued my interest. Then I open the latest New York Magazine, and there Díaz is again, promoting The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, his follow-up to the acclaimed Drown. If I was merely interested before, now I can't wait to devour his work, if only because of this sublime observation on the difficulty and subsequent rewards of the writing process:

"When I talk to people I'm such a dumbass. . . . [But] when I enter that higher-order space that's required to write, I'm a better human. For whatever my writing is, wherever it's ranked, it definitely is the one place that I get to be beautiful."

As you all know, when someone can be profound and find room for the word "dumbass" in the same statement, I'm in. Like anyone who loves words and sentences yet struggles to write them clearly, I know the allure of this beautiful place. Deep.