Having just read Lorrie Moore’s Self Help, Diaz’s “How to Date A Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie”, it really intrigued me. Within both, you get a guide for a very specific circumstance and it seems like a story lies underneath rather than it being an emotionless DIY guide. The person who was leading us through this story, Yunior, seemed not to reflect that much on how he felt-- like some of the characters within Lorrie Moore’s stories. While I was listening to the reading, I was struck by how robotic Yunior’s guide was. This reminded me of “How to Become a Writer” because you get how people react, but you don’t get how the guide of the story feels about it.
Within “How to Date A Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie” I also saw a lot of differences between the stories. This story reminds me the most of “How” and “How to Be an Other Woman” within Self Help. You also get lots of possibilities about what you could do.
One difference that I see between these is that while Moore makes all the outcomes the same regardless of what option she gives you to pick, Diaz makes it so that there could be many different options and of them are possible.
“But usually it won’t work this way” (48)
I guess that might just go along with that this is a guide for multiple types of girls. What do you guys think?
Another difference was that Yunior thinks a lot about what outcomes his actions would have (if he does or doesn’t do something). In Moore’s stories, she portrays the character who is guiding us as more carefree and not thinking that far into the future.
Lizzy, you made a great connection between the past two books that we've read for class. Both books kind of reminded me of predestination, which is to say that no matter what you do the result would always be the same. I think it is noteworthy that Diaz uses first person a lot more frequently than Moore did, but Diaz's stories still strike you deeply, making you think "wow, would I be the same if I were in the same situation"? Though that could just be me -- everyone reads differently.
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ReplyDeleteI think the monotony that we get in the reading is deliberate. When someone is able to write a guide on how interactions in a real-life scenario play out, it takes away some of the spice that life provides. This is represented fairly well in both Moore and Diaz in how they present most of the choices as fairly futile in the grand scheme of things. In addition, they are able to drain something out of these supposedly emotion filled situations.
ReplyDeleteWhen I heard Díaz' reading, the completely robotics nature of his voice made me think that he wasn't really depicting Yunior when he spoke, he was really speaking as an outside voice that was reading the instructions in Yunior's story. I also liked how Díaz included more "choices" in his How-to, giving us a bit of a sense for the repercussions of each action that Yunior (and "you") make.
ReplyDeleteWe maybe could take this as a comment on adolescent boys, but it's true that we don't get Yunior's feelings in this complicated series of instructions--he's too busy fixing up the apartment, worrying about everything that can (and will) go wrong. "Dating" seems more like an overwhelmingly complicated practical matter, and there's no room for feelings (of, like, affection for "the girl," whoever she might be)--he's just trying to get something accomplished, as it were, against all odds. It doesn't seem like very much fun, and I think that's part of the point of the "how-to" style: it's a complicated, confusing *task* that he could screw up any number of ways. The emotion conveyed here is anxiety, more than anything else.
ReplyDeleteI think that the core aspect of the how-to second person style is that it conveys a story in which the reader is under fire to fit into the story, and often, to make the right choices. Even if the reader knows that it is not real, some part of their brain is firing up and saying "gotta remember this!" More broadly then, the second person is about empowering the brain of the person reading the story -- and this is quite evident in Diaz' writing style, which tends to lack quotation marks, group related thoughts, and minimize description in a way that can be easily processed mentally.
ReplyDeleteIt's true. One of the things I found most fascinating about Moore's writing was the number of subconscious observations she made outwardly observable. Seeing the characters' thoughts written out on paper made them stand out much more than when they simply fly by in one's own head. Yunior's self-help rendition seemed to back away from that kind of narration. Diaz's reading itself seemed much more monotone and emotionless, depicting his own writing as even more of an instruction manual than Moore's.
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