This Is How You Lose Her

I just read Junot Díaz's latest collection of stories, This Is How You Lose Her (2012), which was quite a departure from the book I had just started, Aldous Huxley's Those Barren Leaves (1925), but my friend invited me to sit in with his reading group, and this is the book they're reading this month. I didn't come to it completely out of the blue. I'd actually read a couple of reviews which convinced me I didn't want to read further. I confess: I have zero interest in stories about the immigrant experience. They all seem to me to be the same story. Yes, it's a sad story, one of hardship, prejudice, and struggle in an unwelcoming country, sometimes with an uplifting conclusion, sometimes not, but I never find the point of entry for myself to connect.

And yet I did read the entire book, all of the linked stories about Yunior (clearly some version of Díaz himself) and his brother, father and mother, and assorted girls, women, and friends. It's not entirely without interest, and the writing is often amusing and entertaining enough to keep one going, but the whole experience is a little like trying to make a meal of snack food. Finally, it's just not really satisfying. It's all the same thing over and over, basically chasing tail. First it was his father, then his brother, who is dying from cancer, then it's Yunior himself. They like sex and so devote most of their energy to pursuing women, unable to be faithful to any of them, and Díaz suggests (probably a slur he would resent from anyone else) that it's just the way all men from the Dominican Republic behave.

For all I know he's correct and this is a profound insight into the character of his people, or maybe it's just a result of the immigrant experience. I'm doubtful, since what he describes seems comparable to life as lived by the vast majority of people not from the Dominican Republic, the sort of world portrayed on soap operas and by the tabloid press -- both after all are popular for a reason. There just isn't much nuance to this world, with the exception of Yunior's obvious success in school and later as a writer. He found a hook, a way to make good by telling everyone how bad he is. Of course, in the end he falls hard for some girl who won't forgive his cheating ways. I suppose it's a version of poetic justice, except you see it coming from so far off, and the resolution is completely predictable if not formulaic.

I think the reason I recognized the formula so quickly is because I grew up listening to a lot of country-western tunes. Basically, it's the same sad story of lowlife love affairs, guys with cheatin' hearts who keep swearing how sorry they are, and then cry in their beer when the tables get turned on them -- although without all the Spanglish slang to jazz it up. One of my college Latin teachers once summed up the only possible reaction to such fare: great if you like it, stinko if you don't.