"I'm a book-a-decade kind of motherfucker, yo."

this man. i may be in love with this man.

last night i had the immense pleasure of seeing junot diaz speak. and, let me tell you, the pleasure was IMMENSE. sometimes, when you watch someone closely, you can see their thoughts forming and morphing into what finally spills out of their mouth. with mr. diaz, the closer i watched, the more suprised i became as he listened to the questions posed with such nonchalance that it was hard to believe he was even listening, yet he answered with such intensity and clarity that there was no doubt that has a filing cabinet for a mind.

his love of space - both real and imagined, combined with his firm grasp of both the spanish and english languages leaves one (me) swooning. his ongoing discussion with the crowd and himself of the idea of an artist was inspiring and left me wishing that a certain someone (christian) could have attended.

instead, i will paraphrase for him here the part that most interested me of his advice: a good piece of art is a particular piece of art - its generality is found in its particularity and one is left vacillating (sometimes within the same sentence) between feeling that the book is speaking directly to the reader and as though the reader is eavesdropping on the most private of conversations, yeah?

while fearing redundancy, i must again urge you to pick up this man's literary wonder.