LEAH PRICE: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao can be seen (among many other things) as a reflection on what it means to be a “reader/fanboy.” One character says, “I should have known not to trust anybody whose favorite books as a child were Encyclopedia Brown.” How far back does your collection stretch?
JUNOT DÍAZ: I have in my collection some of the first books I ever owned, 1975, though my true first books, a set of Collier’s Encyclopedia from 1965, given to me by a neighbor with volumes 6 and 12 missing, were lost during one of my first moves.
I started acquiring books as soon as I started earning my own money. I was twelve, I guess. Had a couple of paper routes. I cannot exaggerate how poor my family was in my childhood, and there were days when it was a toss-up between food and books—and like Erasmus I tended to buy books first. I still remember buying all the Elric paperbacks and all the John Carter of Mars books from a Waldenbooks in a nearby mall—that took a while. Despite all the times I have moved, I never shed books except once, after I left New Jersey more or less for good. I still mourn all those books I chucked. And I have over the years slowly pulled other copies of these books back into my life. But there are some I’ve never recovered, whose names I’ve forgotten, only the picture on the cover remains.
I certainly couldn’t have survived my childhood without books. All that deprivation and pain—abuse, broken home, a runaway sister, a brother with cancer—the books allowed me to withstand. They sustained me. I read still, prolifically, with great passion, but never like I read in those days: in those days it was life or death.
I also read immensely when I was floundering with my novel Oscar Wao. In the darkness of those years books were lanterns, they were lighthouses.
What books are not on the shelves you allowed us to photograph? Are there kinds of books you keep in places other than the bookshelf—cookbooks, phone books, pornography? What kinds of books do you keep in the kitchen, in the bathroom, on the bedside table?
I actually own no out-and-out pornography. If I did, I’d probably have it out on my shelves. I’ve never liked the idea of a hidden book. It means no one will ever randomly pick it up and have a conversation with you about it. I know you guys didn’t look too closely on one shelf, because there were stacks and stacks of role-playing games on it. Some of those are more cringe-inducing than any page-worn copy of Hustler.
In the bathroom I keep books that I can read quickly. In the kitchen I have paperback genre—horror, fantasy, young adult, science fiction, and some British literary fiction. And some black nationalist conspiracy books. Next to my bed I keep the page-turners, the thrillers and such.
Eventually everything I have gets read. But naturally I buy more than I can read, so there is always at least a hundred-book margin between what I own and what I’ve read. What’s cool is that I’ve caught up a couple times, and this year I intend to catch up again. But then I’ll buy too much and the race starts again.
You mentioned that you’ve moved recently, and that these shelves represent only a fraction of your collection. How did you decide what to take? Which books not here do you miss the most?
I took about twenty books that I needed for my well-being (Delany, Morrison, Edward Rivera, Roy, et cetera) and rebuilt from there. I have so many books in storage. I miss having them around. I won’t know which book I missed the most until I get them back. I’ll mourn after the reunion. Which is kinda strange, but typically me.
Have you ever listened to audiobooks? If so, where and when? Do you enjoy reading aloud or being read aloud to?
When I was still with my ex, I drove back and forth between New York and Cambridge seven to eight times a month, and that’s how I got into audiobooks. I had to stick to the oral tales—Beowulf, Gilgamesh—and to the adventure books and thrillers. Anything else would put me to sleep, since I read in my head a lot faster than folks read aloud.
I liked reading to my ex. Never read to anyone else. Never had anyone read to me, really.
You must be drowning in more complimentary copies than you have time or desire to read. When someone you care about gives you a book, do you feel obliged to read it? How do you dispose of the books you don’t want—donating, recycling, putting out on the curb …? Do you have some taboo against throwing away books when you’re done reading them? Conversely, when a book falls apart from use, do you repair it, or are you just as happy to buy a new copy?
I read pretty damn fast, so when a friend gives me a book of theirs, I shoot through it ASAP. Less trouble that way, and causes me no grief, so why not just do it? I give books away. I live in a literary building, I’ll tell you that, and whatever they don’t want I give to a homeless couple on the square who sell books for a living. Ever since I threw books away during my Leaving Jersey move, I swore never to throw books away. Galleys I can throw away. But not books. I only throw away books that are too damaged to read, and I try to prolong their lives with tape. I have some Frankensteins around here you just wouldn’t imagine.
What do you imagine your library looking like five, ten, twenty years from now? Do you think you’ll still own objects made of paper and glue? Do you think comic books, in particular, will survive in hard-copy form?
I figure books survived the Dark Ages—why couldn’t they survive the Age of Darkest Capital? Books for me are many things: they are friends, they are companions, they are mentors, they are warnings, they clown, they entertain, they hearten, and they make me stronger. But most of all books (I say again and again) are like the Thirty-Mile Woman from Toni Morrison’s Beloved: “She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”
Tom Athanasiou Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor
Edward Rivera Family Installments: Memories of Growing Up Hispanic
Thomas G. Karis and Gail M. Gerhart From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882– 1990, vol. 5, Nadir and Resurgence, 1964–1979
Arundhati Roy The God of Small Things
Marguerite Feitlowitz A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture
J. R. R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings
Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez Love and Rockets, no. 12, Poison River
Samuel R. Delany The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village
Eric Greene Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race, Politics, and Popular Culture
Maxine Hong Kingston The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
