Decoding Suburban Vibes, with Writer Jason Diamond

About 6 months into my first year of college, I found myself soliloquizing to some friends about the beauties of suburban life. It struck me immediately that I was longing for a world that I found profoundly boring for 18 years, and had swore to never replicate. I was going to live my big life in cities. Yet the pleasures of driving around open roads amidst constant pockets of civilization and seeing the formation of an unspoken, and distant community that was fostered through nothing more than proximity, still appealed to me in a way my city-dwelling friends couldn’t understand. My suburban life in Ohio was quiet and comfortable, and for all it lacked, it also guaranteed a great deal. This has been a bit of an obsession of mine since I moved away from the suburbs. Through college in a cold rural town, to the Atlantic metropolis of London, England, something about suburban America still baffled me. 

I’d read my fair share of suburban writers, but when I came across a book that strived to understand the weird yet alluring quality that American suburbia presents, I knew I had to read it, with the hope that maybe this would scratch this never-ending itch. 

Jason Diamond is the author of the 2020 book THE SPRAWL as well a memoir from 2016 called SEARCHING FOR JOHN HUGHES. In addition to his books, he also writes for various publications including NEW YORK MAGAZINE, and GQ, and has a Substack called THE MELT. 

THE SPRAWL is a new kind of book because it attempts to detail a history of America with the suburb at the center. Diamond is of the suburbs. And his upbringing in a suburb of Chicago, is central to the book itself. THE SPRAWL combines personal anecdotes with heavily researched demographic and geographic data to try to answer the same question that was on my mind. What exactly is special about the American suburb? 

So this is where we start our conversation. Jason and I speak about his book, the exorbitant amount of driving he did to research it, as well as some of the cultural references that feature in its pages. This conversation about suburbia morphs into a larger one about America. And this is especially evident when we start talking about all the exclusion and racism that is a part of the suburban and American story.  

Diamond’s writing is special because he uses common structures and cultural objects that have made it into the vernacular, to ask questions about the culture he lives in. This is why later in the conversation, when I ask him about his critical process, I call him a chronicler of vibes.  So that’s what this conversation is. It starts with the suburbs, but then progresses into the two of us simply tryna gauge where the vibes are at.

The Melt Substack

THE SPRAWL

References

American Pastoral - Philip Roth

John Cheever

Bowling Alone - Robert D. Putnam

Recommendations

Grace Paley Short Stories

Sag Harbor - Colson Whitehead

Crook Manifesto - Colson Whitehead

The Righteous Gemstones