Drown

Drown is a very cohesive piece with a  consistent narrator voice throughout. However, at certain times, it is unclear whether Junot Diaz has Yunior narrating the story. One of the most poignant examples of this is in "Negocios." Also in "No Face" the narrator is obviously Ysrael, the kid whose face was eaten off by a pig when he was a baby. Junot Diaz's collection is most like Denis Johnson's "Jesus' Son" of the cycles we have read. They both have this dirty realism quality. While the stories are insightful and artistic, they also all show this dirtiness and grittiness of real life. Both of the cycles are about lower class individuals mixed up in alcohol and drugs and sex. However, the narrators in both cycles, Yunior and Fuckhead, respectively, are able to convey this poetic like language to the reader although we are painted a picture of their dirt, real world.  

Although the characters seem to be uneducated with nothing insightful or intelligent to say, there are moments when Yunior would surprise me. In "Edison, New Jersey" he shows a very advanced knowledge of history, "There are Incan Roads in the Andes that even today you couldn't work a knife between two of the cobblestones. The sewers that the Romans built in Bath were so good that they weren't replaced until the 1950s. That's the sort of thing I can believe in." Here he shows that he is actually very intelligent and knows quite a bit about something as abstract as artichectural methods of the ancient world. He is also able to analogize it to his present day situation at fixing pool tables. He takes something innovative, amazing and beautiful (the aqueducts of Rome and roads of the Incans) and is able to make a strong comparison with fixing tables. This is his reality, his dirty realism, that fixing tables to him is as much of an art and science as building aqueducts in ancient Rome. 

However, there is also that vulgarity throughout the cycle that keeps the reader placed in their dirty world. Right from the beginning in "Ysrael" the characters speak so frankly and vulgarly that its impossible to miss. This is how they speak, "He'd take the campo girls down to the dams and swim and if he was lucky they let him put it in their mouth or in their asses." And you have to remember this is a little child saying this. This statement is in stark contrast to the seemingly smart and proud man that knew so much about building aqueducts and prided himself on his skill of fixing pool tables.

The language of Yunior and his family and friends is what makes Drown, well, Drown. Its unique to anything else we have read. Right from the opening quote we know that language will be a major theme. The quote from Gustavo Perez Firmat tells us that although he is writing in English he has failed to tell you what he wanted to tell you because he does not belong to the English language culture. He does not belong to those traditional American values. He is an outcast in the mainstream society and through his language he makes this obvious. It sets him apart from main stream America, but it keeps him and his family together, keeping their culture and traditional language of the Dominican Republic. 

In high school I remember reading Denis Johnson's "Emergency" then reading Diaz's "Aurora" and thinking to myself that "Aurora" was just a Hispanic version of "Emergency." The styles of the two authors are very similar. But, now that I have read the stories the way they were supposed to be read, inside of their respective cycles I can see how each has its own unique language and style. For my writing cycle I would like to have a distinct language and style to it. One comprable to Johnson or Diaz. I want each story in my own cycle to feel similar to one that precedes and succeeds it.