Don’t
Let Me Die in Disneyland: The 3-D Life of Eddie Loperena
1. What really inspired you
to write your book, to force you from taking an idea or experience and
conveying it into a book?
Several
inspirations that I can’t exhaust here. One was to give myself a good excuse to
write humorous prose. Another was to satirize what self-flattery “Puerto Rican”
means in an English speaker’s mind and satirize what self-flattery “Newyorican”
means to an island Puerto Rican’s mind. They two sides survive on fairy tales
about themselves and each other, one superior the other proving equality, the
two side just humans who ultimately will fail at both. What Eddie hears is a
hodgepodge of overestimated sociopolitical talk that doesn’t mean anything to
him. He says, “We’re equal not because we’re good as they are. We’re equal
because we’re as full of shit as they are.”
2. What is it about and whom
do you believe is your targeted reader?
The
tagline summarizes it: The picaresque, smart and smartass memoir of Harvard lawyer
Eddie Loperena’s Newyorican life in “the country I was offered.” Frankly, my
targeted reader is any literate person who likes writing that is witty,
humorous, and intelligent. Readers looking for social consciousness will find
that too but not delivered by prefabricated jargon about tragic young
characters. Puerto Ricans actually do become adults, a fact not easily imagined
if judging from the YA and teen romance niche that the major publishing houses
has reserved to sell to schools and libraries. In sum, I am targeting a reader
with literary sensibilities, a social consciousness, and a sense of humor.
3. What do you hope will be
the everlasting thoughts for readers who finish your book? What should
remain with them long after putting it down?
The
novel is written as the memoir of Eddie Loperena, who wrote his 3-D story
because he knows American eyes only see him in predictable two dimensions,
whether in antipathy or sympathetic political correctness. What he creates is a
world wider in the imagination than what Eddie calls our “sociological swamp”
and his story ends up being not about exotic characters but universally, like
all fiction, about the reader. What I want to remain is a dissolution of the
American obsession with difference– race, ethnicity, minority and majority–
whether to defend equality or supremacy. Tragic and central though that
obsession may be to the American conversation, intellectually it is how Eddie
sees it, a consecration of the risible.
4. What advice or words of
wisdom do you have for fellow writers?
I
don’t think that wishing them good luck counts as wisdom, so I’ll try harder.
Don’t be your writing’s defender; be its most severe critic. Hemingway’s
wording: a good writer must possess a “built-in, shock-proof shit detector.”
5. What trends in the book
world do you see and where do you think the book publishing industry is
heading?
Smaller
and Independent literary book publishers are perforce a
balancing act, of budget and artistic standards, They often address readers
looking for novelty. But the book publishing "industry" responds to
the constant gauging of a more conservative book-reading audience. It's a
business looking to make money, not change the world. Major publishers offer
readers foremost the money-makers, the familiar and not the exotic. Few
translations except for international stars. The same for minority writers.
Recently I have noticed that agents take on mainly young authors. There seems
to be a proliferation of young adult books. In previous years publishers sought
blockbusters and wouldn’t turn one down today if they felt strongly that it was
a winner but more routinely they produce highly marketable books, young adult
and children’s fiction and nonfiction on pop culture, self-help, pop
journalism, not essays but creative nonfiction. I’ve taught creative writing
classes where the students want to learn to write but don’t read. In other
words, the industry has long been responding to the decline in literacy
although I forecast a comeback.
6. What great challenges did
you have in writing your book?
Trying
to figure out what it was about. I never know what you really want to say until
I start writing inspired by what I think I want to say.
7. If people can only buy one
book this month, why should it be yours?
Because
it is funny, insightful about many things readers thought they
understood–America, the Seventies, True Love, Puerto Ricans, other Latinos,
political correctness, Disneyland– and most important, because it is written in
highly entertaining prose.
J.
A. Marzán, a graduate of Fordham U., (B.A.), Columbia U. (M.F.A), and New York
U. (Ph.D.), was Poet Laureate of Queens, N.Y. from 2004-2007. His novel, The
Bonjour Gene, was a University of Wisconsin Press submission to the 2004
Pulitzer Prize. “Marzán displays the wit and intellectual verve rarely seen in
contemporary literature."—Pulitzer Prize winner Oscar Hijuelos. Nonfiction
credits include the landmark: The Spanish American Roots of William Carlos
Williams, (U. Texas Press). “...determines how Williams is read today.”–
guest editors, The William Carlos Williams Review, 2017. Poetry
credits include: former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York, Translations
without Originals (English, Ismael Reed Books) and Puerta de Tierra (Spanish,
U. Puerto Rico Press). Poems appear in several editions of various
college texts, among them The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Latino
Boom, and Literature: Reading to Write and in distinguished
journals, among them Ploughshares, Tin House, and Harper's Magazine.
A profile of him was published in the fall 2009 issue of Columbia Magazine.
J.A. Marzán makes his home in Queens, New York. For more info, see:
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