The Pinnacle(?) of Postmodern Storytelling: Drown as Anti-Narrative

Whose narrative is this?

This question is likely foremost on the minds of many, if not most readers of Junot Diaz’s novel, Drown, and it seems that the question is valid. Beginning with a section on “Ysrael,” and containing loosely-related (if at all) stories throughout, the novel makes one feel as though one is literally drowning. Yunior’s voice drives some of the sections, or maybe all, his older brother’s voice may be behind at least one of the sections—or he may just disappear altogether, along with the sister, and even in the sections (short stories?) that Yunior narrates, he is not always a main character—or is he? Is Aurora even a character to discuss? What about the woman Yunior ‘saves’ from the wealthy man’s home? And is she the subject of “Girlfriend,” or is Aurora, or is some other woman not named anywhere else? Is “Yunior” the narrator of Papi’s story? And is it Papi’s story? What about Ysrael, who bookends the novel? What part does he play? Questions give rise to more questions, until there seem to be so many that, as the reader, I do feel as though I’m drowning.

While Diaz’s intent is indiscernible (and unnecessary to decipher), that the reader identify with the characters in the sensation of drowning—thrashing about madly in an attempt to regain one’s balance and ability to tread the treacherous water of the novel—is certainly part of the ordering of the text; for while threads of narrative are hardly, if at all, present, the novel is nothing if not carefully crafted. Thus, it is useful to explore the reasons for writing a story that isn’t really a story—an anti-narrative, if you will.

Perhaps a study of which characters are ‘drowning’ will help to shed some light on the novel, but then, what character isn’t? Yunior, narrating the short story that shares the novel’s title, comments on his literal feeling, and interestingly, he doesn’t seem to fear it as much as one might expect. Indeed, the way that he feels about being under the water—that it is a quiet, protected space unlike the noise and chaos above water—is positive, and it becomes difficult, then, to understand the negativity that pervades the book, unless one understands the actual drowning to take place paradoxically above the water. The description of Papi’s arrival in Florida mimics the sense of confusion and panic that is reminiscent of drowning, and Mami’s inability to speak recalls the muffled sound that voices make underwater. Mami’s retreat into herself causes one to think of the silence and isolation of being trapped underwater; the absolute blackness of Yunior’s highs evoke the same images. As well, Aurora’s drug-wasted body and mind are drowning, as is the unnamed woman Yunior ‘rescues’ from the pool-table delivery. Beto, Yunior’s friend, comments just before he leaves for school, that “no one can touch me now,” which one can interpret in several different ways: literally no one can touch him, likely his father, with whom he regularly watches porn flicks; and metaphorically no one can touch him, or hold him back from getting out of the neighborhood. Furthermore, the comment, occurring as it does immediately subsequent to Beto holding Yunior under the water, is indicative of Beto’s desire to survive, not to be held under by ‘touch.’

Just think, all this and I haven’t even started on the direct effects of immigration and the notion v. reality of the ‘American dream.” Or have I? Is that maybe a function of the feeling of drowning--to allow the reader into the experience of the immigrant?

Interesting, isn’t it, that although the sections, short stories, parts, what have you of the novel seem so little related—an anti-narrative, it is virtually impossible to speak of only one without referencing at least one of the others. Thus, the novel takes postmodernism to its next level: narrative becomes anti-narrative and intertextuality becomes intratextuality (somehow uniquely more than homophorically referential), making it all the more difficult to discern when one narrative ends and another begins; and whose narrative any one narrative is, since there is no one narrative. The stories are uniquely interconnected and conflated, ultimately resulting in overlapping and / or mis/unrecognized identities (think of the three Ramons), as well as completely disappearing and / or disassociated characters.