Bookworm

Yesterday Mike and I went to see Junot Diaz speak at the library nearby. Junot Diaz wrote last year's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Mike and I just read the book and he spotted that the author was speaking at the library we frequent. I liked the book, but it was written in a unique style.

I have never been to one of these events before, so I was curious to see what the turnout would be and how the session would go. It was packed when we got there, and people kept piling in. The moderator of the session ended up being a CBS news reporter (instead of the librarian I pictured). They started off with a piece the reporter did on Diaz, and then he conducted an interview. Junot Diaz was pretty funny and insightful, so it was pretty cool to hear what he had to say. It turned out that the book took 11 years to write. I think it was worth the wait. He has a very atypical background. He is a "ghetto nerd". He immigrated to the US when he was a child and settled in a rough part of Jersey. He would sneak off to the library and downplay his nerdy side to survive. Alot of the same themes are in the book.

The funny observation that we both had watching this event regarded the crowd there. It seemed like people had an entitled attitude. A woman coming in really late stood right in front of Mike without regard to if he could see or not. Stuff like that was going on when they did questions from the audience. People just blurting out questions to get theirs heard. The most telling question came from a woman who asked Junot Diaz if going to grad school helped him write the novel. After answering and then commenting about how it helps to get in a program that will give you a fellowship and waive tuition, the woman made a comment that illustrated the snobbery going on. She rejected going for the free education, because she felt the "craft would suffer". Somehow I think a Pulitzer Prize winning author from the ghetto tells us all we need to know.