{"id":11893,"date":"2010-03-15T11:16:22","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T15:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=11893"},"modified":"2016-06-08T18:30:47","modified_gmt":"2016-06-08T22:30:47","slug":"junot-diaz-the-pura-principle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/03\/15\/junot-diaz-the-pura-principle\/","title":{"rendered":"Junot D\u00edaz: “The Pura Principle”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The Pura Principle\"<\/strong><\/span>\r\nby Junot D\u00edaz<\/span>\r\nOriginally published in the March 22, 2010 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/span>\r\nClick <\/span>here <\/a>to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker <\/em>webpage.<\/span><\/pre>\n
\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n
I still haven\u2019t quite determined whether I liked or didn\u2019t like The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao<\/em>. When I saw that D\u00edaz has another story here in The New Yorker<\/em>, I was both wary and excited. If I like it, perhaps I\u2019ll remember whether I liked Oscar<\/em>.\u00a0If I don\u2019t like it, well, perhaps that will confirm what I have been suspecting: that I\u2019m just not a fan of D\u00edaz.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I wrote the block quote above before reading \u201cThe Pura Principle.\u201d I can confirm at least one thing: I\u2019m not a fan of D\u00edaz. What I still cannot confirm: Whether I liked The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao<\/em>. I believe I am a fan of Oscar<\/em>, but the things I found somewhat annoying there I found super annoying here. On the one hand, D\u00edaz\u2019s writing is unique. However, after Oscar<\/em> it doesn\u2019t feel as fresh. Here is a typical sample:<\/p>\n
Lady still<\/em> managed to scrounge a couple hours here and there to hang with her new main man, Jehovah.\u00a0I had my yerba, she had hers. She\u2019d never been big on church before, but as soon as we landed on cancer planet she went so over-the-top Jesucristo that I think she would have nailed herself to a cross if she\u2019d had one handy. That last year she was especially Ave Maria.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As you can see, the language isn\u2019t an impediment in and of itself; it flows nicely. It\u2019s just that the style can become a bit in your face.\u00a0Aware that that is exactly what D\u00edaz is attempting to do, I have to just say I\u2019m not a fan. But where Oscar<\/em> was strong\u00a0— in its unique story where the narration tended to downplay, to great effect,\u00a0the violence and loneliness throughout\u00a0— \u201cThe Pura Principle\u201d fails.<\/p>\n
The story started out well. I actually thought I was going to like it.\u00a0Our narrator Yunior describes the changes that have occurred in their poor urban New Jersey household since they \u201clanded on cancer planet.\u201d Yunior\u2019s older brother Rafa has leukemia, though he still acts like the cocky inner-city boy that he is. Their father left to be with another woman. Their mother loves Rafa deeply\u00a0— he was a kind of miracle baby, coming after she thought she\u2019d never have children. When Rafa decides to go get a job at a knitting store, both Yunior and Mama are worried about whether he is too sick\u00a0— though they also recognize that he has never really worked in his life.<\/p>\n
As expected, work at a knitting store doesn\u2019t go well. Besides becoming disgruntled, after only a few weeks Rafa collapses on the floor.\u00a0Comforting him was Pura, an illegal Dominican immigrant.<\/p>\n
To me this is where it fell apart.\u00a0The story became focused on the relationship between Mama and Pura. Mama is uncharacteristically mean to the girl.<\/p>\n
To me the story fizzled to the point in the end where I didn\u2019t care about what was going on anymore but just got kind of annoyed at the narration tricks.\u00a0I didn\u2019t hate the story, but I became uninterested.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker fiction is Junot D\u00edaz’s “The Pura Principle.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Junot D\u00edaz: \"The Pura Principle\" http:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-35P","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[89,94],"tags":[998],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-11893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-junot-diaz","category-new-yorker-fiction","tag-2010-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/The-Pura-Principle.jpg?fit=1198%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-35P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11893"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18518,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11893\/revisions\/18518"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11893"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}