Driving a Pulitzer

Junot Diaz has taken home the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his debut novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. This is the Dominican-American’s first novel and second book. His first book, Drown, a critically acclaimed collection of short stories, came out twelve years earlier in 1996. A gap? A gap indeed! But this hasn’t been a quietly passed stretch for Diaz. In these twelve years, he has done more than most writers, publishing nine stories in the New Yorker and placing countless others elsewhere. And did I mention that he teaches creative writing to undergraduates at M.I.T. and is the fiction editor for the Boston Review?

But still – twelve years between books?

According to a recent article in the New York Times, “Mr. Diaz said he kicked around the idea for his first novel for about four years and then spent seven years writing it. ‘In some ways I think that this book waited for me to become a better person before it wrote itself,’ he said.”

When Diaz visited my school in the fall of 2006, he had a much less “Zen” perspective on his future Pulitzer-winning novel, which he was then working on. During a Q&A he was asked if he had something in the works. I can't quote his answer, but it went something like: “I’ve spent forever working on this thing, trying to figure it out. And I’m sick of it. It’ll be done soon, thank god.”

After his lecture, I had the privilege of driving Diaz to our school’s watering hole, O’Gara’s, where a few of us were going to meet for drinks. (Time Out – I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Josiah, you had a Pulitzer Prize winner in your car?!?!?! I knew you were thinking this because it's what I've been thinking all week. Anyway...) We talked about his lecture that evening, about his short stories and about his experience teaching at M.I.T. I told him that I teach a small creative writing class to adults with disabilities, and I asked about what it was like to teach the so-called “smartest” students in the world a subject like creative writing.

He said, “They’re all amazing at it. Everything they write is perfect, totally publishable. They scrutinize everything they do, pour over every sentence, so it all comes out beautiful. But they don’t care about it, at least not in the sense that it would ever be something they’d pursue.”

I told him that some of my students use adaptive equipment. I said, “They pour over every word too. But it’s because it’s a slow process for them.”

I didn’t quite know how to put what I was thinking then. I thought for a moment and said, “The thing is, they might not ever be able to publish anything they write, but they care about every word.”

He said, “That’s cool, man. That’s very cool.”

At the bar, a dozen of us (students mostly) pulled tables together, ordered fries and beers and watched the screens overhead as the Red Sox played host to the White Sox. I can’t remember much from the game, but remember that Diaz and I quickly established that we both loved baseball, and I remember that this was what dominated the rest of the evening's conversation. He, a Mets and Red Sox fan, confessed that he was doubtful that the Sox would win another World Series anytime soon. But then, and with some reluctance - as if he were obligated to remember, he started talking about how great it was to see them win in 2004.

A friend of Diaz came then. He joined us at the table and we all went through a series of brief introductions. I didn’t recognize his name, and I can’t for the life of me remember it now, which is my loss, because, as it turned out, he was a well-known local poet. After he and Diaz left, which was before the rest of us, everyone became outwardly excited. “Do you know who that was?” they said. I had no idea. They laughed at the fact that I had just spent that last half hour talking baseball with such a beloved poet.

Now, nearly two years later, I’m more enamored by the fact that I had spent the evening talking about baseball with a future Pulitzer Prize winning author.

But let me also say this: what I most value about my experience that night is not that I got to drive in my car or share beers with a celebrity writer, but that I got to hear then how exhausted he was from working over his novel and compare it to now, where he has a Pulitzer to show for it.

He waited until it was right. Imagine if he hadn't.