New Fiction From Junot Diaz

The Winter Fiction Issue of the New Yorker has a blistering super-short story by Junot Diaz. It's all dirty-talking bravado (and boasts what must be a record number of curse words per New Yorker page) followed by a quietly devastating finale. Diaz's male characters do talk about women with a lot of raunchy language, but he never lets the guys off the hook for their transgressions. He gets underneath that macho facade and reveals the romantic, vulnerable and conflicted layers layers carefully hidden from sight. Diaz was a great presence at the 2004 Crossing Borders Seminar, a real live wire--I'm really looking forward to hearing him in a couple weeks.