Curt's Read-Bag: The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Title: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
By: Junot Diaz (Riverhead, 340 pp.)
Concerning: Snapshots of several generations of an ill-fated “Afro-Dominican” family in New Jersey and Santo Domingo, replete with geeky pop culture references, untranslated Spanish terms, urban slang and footnotes about the horrors of the Trujillo dictatorship.
Quote: In the first major footnote about Trujillo: “He was our Sauron, our Arawn, our Darkseid, our Once and Future Dictator, a personaje so outlandish, so perverse, so dreadful that not even a sci-fi writer could have made his ass up.”
Verdict: If “magic realism” draws energy and conventions myth and folklore, what label should we give the kind of contemporary American fiction that bears the influence of comic books and other artifacts of pop culture? “Cosmic ray realism?” “Super power realism?” Diaz’s Pulitzer-winning novel can be lumped in with that, along with Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a novel in which the pop references were so casual and so (seemingly) obscure. For instance, Diaz describes the underbosses and secret police of Trujillo in terms of Tolkein heirarchy, from the Eye of Sauron to the Nazgul down to the orcs. (Oddly, some references he drops at least twice, including Luba from ‘Love and Rockets,’ Dejah Thoris from ‘John Carter of Mars’ and Unus the Untouchable, an X-Men villain.) Perhaps the ideal reader of this book would be someone like moroccomole, who would probably get the same geeky references as me while recognizing the slangy Spanish. (Neither of those apparently were an impediment to the Pulitzer committee). Style aside, even though Diaz clearly loves the Dominican use of language, the country’s places and the fierceness of his main characters, the book strike me as a damning portrait of both the Dominican Republic and “Dominican culture” as both motivated by little more than the impulses towards sex and violence. (I reacted in a similar way to The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.) It’s a very compelling read, particularly as the sections go back in time and you find out the details of some of the horrible bits of foreshadowing. It’s an impressive book.
Also: Diaz nicknames two police goons ‘Solomon Grundy’ and ‘Gorilla Grod’, but the latter’s name is actually spelled with two “ds.” So even though HE has the Pulitzer Prize, I know how to spell ‘Gorilla Grodd.’
And: Here’s one I didn’t get: “He wasn’t svelte by any stretch of the imagination, but he wasn’t Joseph Conrad’s wife no more, either.” So, she was obese or something?
By: Junot Diaz (Riverhead, 340 pp.)
Concerning: Snapshots of several generations of an ill-fated “Afro-Dominican” family in New Jersey and Santo Domingo, replete with geeky pop culture references, untranslated Spanish terms, urban slang and footnotes about the horrors of the Trujillo dictatorship.
Quote: In the first major footnote about Trujillo: “He was our Sauron, our Arawn, our Darkseid, our Once and Future Dictator, a personaje so outlandish, so perverse, so dreadful that not even a sci-fi writer could have made his ass up.”
Verdict: If “magic realism” draws energy and conventions myth and folklore, what label should we give the kind of contemporary American fiction that bears the influence of comic books and other artifacts of pop culture? “Cosmic ray realism?” “Super power realism?” Diaz’s Pulitzer-winning novel can be lumped in with that, along with Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a novel in which the pop references were so casual and so (seemingly) obscure. For instance, Diaz describes the underbosses and secret police of Trujillo in terms of Tolkein heirarchy, from the Eye of Sauron to the Nazgul down to the orcs. (Oddly, some references he drops at least twice, including Luba from ‘Love and Rockets,’ Dejah Thoris from ‘John Carter of Mars’ and Unus the Untouchable, an X-Men villain.) Perhaps the ideal reader of this book would be someone like moroccomole, who would probably get the same geeky references as me while recognizing the slangy Spanish. (Neither of those apparently were an impediment to the Pulitzer committee). Style aside, even though Diaz clearly loves the Dominican use of language, the country’s places and the fierceness of his main characters, the book strike me as a damning portrait of both the Dominican Republic and “Dominican culture” as both motivated by little more than the impulses towards sex and violence. (I reacted in a similar way to The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.) It’s a very compelling read, particularly as the sections go back in time and you find out the details of some of the horrible bits of foreshadowing. It’s an impressive book.
Also: Diaz nicknames two police goons ‘Solomon Grundy’ and ‘Gorilla Grod’, but the latter’s name is actually spelled with two “ds.” So even though HE has the Pulitzer Prize, I know how to spell ‘Gorilla Grodd.’
And: Here’s one I didn’t get: “He wasn’t svelte by any stretch of the imagination, but he wasn’t Joseph Conrad’s wife no more, either.” So, she was obese or something?