"The Cheater's Guide to Love" by Junot Diaz (from The New Yorker, July23, 2012)

My Post on "Miss Lorna"

I have previously read and posted on an excellant short story by Junot Diaz, "Miss Lorna".  Prior to starting my blog I read his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Pao and his first collection of short stories, Drowned.  I hope to read his very well reviewed second collection, This is How You Lose Her one of these days.

"The Cheater's Guide to Love", from the archives of The New Yorker, centers on a Harvard Professor and author from The Domincan Republic and his romantic issues.  A reductionist approach to the writings of Diaz could summarize his work as "man from the Domincan Republic living in New York City or Boston adjusting to society while constantly looking for women to have sex with".  

I think I liked "The Cheater's Guide to Love" more than his novel or other stories I have read.  It is about obsessive love, about the consequences of adultery, about machismo, Dominican culture, about objectifying women, about male bonding all while teaching at Harvard.  The narrator faces racial prejuduce all the time in Boston, of the crudest sort.  When he tries to enter buildings at Harvard security demands to see his ID but lets in others with no checks.  

This is an excellant story and I thank The New Yorker for letting us read it for free this summer.

You can read the story here

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/23/the-cheaters-guide-to-love

Mel u