The other Saturday I heard Luis Alberto Urrea talking about his new book with Scott Simon on “Weekend Edition.” I had not heard him since attending a wonderfully entertaining talk he gave at the San Miguel Writers' Conference in 2015. Then last week I heard him interviewed by Terry Gross on “Fresh Air.”
Saturday I picked up last Sunday’s New York Times Sunday Review and read an essay by Luis Alberto Urrea on Trump’s proposed wall. Yesterday, reading the Book Review (my interest in books obviously exceeds my interest in politics), I found Urrea interviewed about his reading tastes.
Urrea strikes me as a fine writer and a good man with a warm and gentle sense of humor, so I don’t begrudge him this flash flood of attention. (OK, maybe a little.) What I find cloying and a bit suspect is the way you can see the publicity machine stolidly at work. Simon and Gross both work for the same company and the Sunday Review and the Book Review are both sections of the same newspaper. Neither NPR nor the Times had much interest in Urrea until his latest novel appeared – touching on the timely subject of immigration – and now, suddenly, they can’t get enough of him.
