Drown | Literary Qualities

Drown Literary Qualities

The stories in Drown are fairly short, averaging between fifteen and twenty pages.

Only "Negocios" is much longer, at fiftyfour pages. Each story is a slice of life, more a presentation of setting, character, and mood than a plot-driven tale. Many of the stories have unclear resolutions.

As Diaz himself admits, much of his work is thinly veiled autobiography. His work is definitely fiction, however, and not to be seen as accurately portraying his own life. His life serves as literary inspiration, but he freely embellishes and changes characters, settings, and events to enhance his storytelling.

Diaz's greatest literary strength is his narrative style. He creates raw prose and uses spare language in an unadorned style similar to reportage. All but two of the stories are in the first-person voice. "No Face" is told in the third person. Its smoothly flowing, dreamlike narrative style...
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