Junot Diaz: Revenge of the Nerd

He won a Pulitzer for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous LIfe of Oscar Wao, but when Junot Diaz took to the lectern at Benaroya Hall last night, after what he called a "super-long introduction," he looked out into the crowd and said, "Guys, you should be up here. Super fucking scary." Diaz's spoken voice was straight from the page: super-fucking-compelling, laugh-your-ass-off funny, shit so true you don't even tell your homies.

Diaz discussed Junior, his narrator and "productively fucked-up" alter ego, and the fact that his work is often called "immigrant literature" even though the Dominican-born Diaz, whose mother doesn't speak a word of English ("the Republican nightmare," as he put it) has never written about the process of immigration. Maybe, he mused, that's one of his limitations as a writer, since every writer has a "blind spot." Which is a good thing, because "you can't reach a reader unless you've passed through some kind of vulnerability."

Oozing vulnerability onstage, Diaz spoke of his nerdcore youth and Junior's experience as a Dominican Tolkien fiend obsessed with the racist Lord of the Rings. He acknowledged the complications of using the N-word, writing about things like child rape, and representing the "colossal male privilege" in the world without condoning it.

He read from some stories, which cracked up the crowd, and when Diaz seemed embarrassed or surprised by the frequent applause, it did not seem like false modesty. He alluded to issues of class, and how he now teaches at MIT, where the students are "select college kids," same as any other, "the kind that make you feel incompetent." He spoke of his love of footnotes, failed attempts to write sci-fi, and preternaturally gloomy disposition. "I'm my own worse curse," he said, so down he cheers up his fellow writer friends.

Diaz doesn't think his mixing Spanish and English puts any readers off; as it's an invitation to learn more. Same thing as when he was learning to read English; the unknown words were an "invitation to form community." That, after all, is what reading is, a collective experience that at long last lets us know that even though we feel all fucked-up and nerdy and alone, we're still all fucked up and nerdy and alone together. For reals.