The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

You're going to want to know Spanish to read (listen, in my case) this book. You're also going to want to have a working knowledge of geekery: Lord of the Rings and superhero comics especially, but Star Wars and the oft-quoted sci-fi and fantasy as well will inform the offbeat metaphors that litter the book.

That aside, this story was wonderful. Like any good fiction, its about a lot. Family, sex, love, heritage, Latin American politics.

I'm not sure it broadened my understanding of the world around me, though it did widen my perspective on the racism of Dominican/Haitian relations and the specific ethnic (shut up, I hate that word too.) qualities of being Dominican that mirrored in a strange way my own Jewish family. But it was another show more tightly wrapped, delicious morsel of a story that was a treat to pick up and put down. The book has a unique if very specific voice: a Dominican male story-teller, one who is not afraid to direct comments specifically to the reader as a reader, someone who dabbles in geekery enough to make correlations between real life events and the minutia of comic book characters (and do it fairly successfully, without overdoing it or having it sound forced), but not enough to have it interfere with his personal life.

Assuming this is a voice the author chose, and not his own personality, I am very impressed. It is well researched, and I look forward to reading more from this author. show less

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is an exciting story, all of it -- probably more so in the portions that take place in the Dominican Republic during the terrible reign of the dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo than those telling the story of the title character -- but the manner in which Junot Diaz chooses to tell the story, the literary pyrotechnics, get in its way. The story is told without continuity, jumping from the tale of one character in one era to that of another character in another era, without regard to decade or generation. Different portions are told by different narrators, and sometimes the narrator is not identifiable until well into his or her portion of the tale. It often lapses into Spanish without translation, show more making those who read only English feel as if they are missing half the tale.

Oscar is a nerd -- a hugely overweight young man with glasses who knows everything about science fiction and role-playing games but nothing about girls except that he lusts constantly and helplessly after them. He comes from a family that has endured more than its share of tragedy, beginning with his grandfather, who inadvertently insulted Trujillo in an attempt to save his eldest daughter from rape and ruin. His mother, the youngest daughter in the family when it lost everything in the aftermath of her father's downfall, endured an unspeakable childhood as a virtual slave until she was rescued by a distant relative. But disaster followed her in her choice of boyfriends, when she again tangled with the Trujillo family; and the curse, the fuku, even followed her to Brooklyn. She transmitted the incredible beauty of the women in her family to her daughter, who had the same sort of trouble with men that seemed inescapable. Three generations, constant horrors. It seems that the island paradise can bring no good to anyone.

Nor can Oscar escape the fuku. He can't get laid to save his soul, it seems, and it looks very much as if he is going to die a virgin. Whenever he falls in love, which is often, it is with someone completely inappropriate, usually with a woman who already has a boyfriend, and often with a boyfriend who is downright hazardous to Oscar's health. Women love him as a friend, but cannot see beyond the tattered copy of Alan Moore's Watchmen that Oscar holds close to his blubbery belly. Will love -- and sex -- ever find him? And will he survive the experience?

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is not a happy book. You will find yourself enraged at Trujillo's despotism (and the complicity of the United States in it), learning more than you perhaps knew about this dark history. You will be depressed at Oscar's own depression, particularly if you yourself were a nerdy kid with glasses and a book. You will feel the power the women feel in their beautiful bodies, and the fierceness of their love and determination when they are with the men they want.

Diaz is a powerful writer, but he needs to bring all that power under control. I have no quarrel with writing that experiments with narrative, that changes focus, that plays with the reader; but I demand that the play be fair. I want to know who is talking to me: is this Oscar's college roommate, his sister, a third-person omniscient narrator? I want to know what is being said, not have to run to my computer and get a bad translation with the Google translator when some Spanish appears that I can't translate with the help of my single year of college Spanish. This writing has so much energy and life; now it needs direction. show less

This book is rife with literary significance and meaning, as well as relevant political history and commentary. I found the language (which is very often very foul) a little distracting and troublesome, but generally appropriate for the vernacular of the characters. The pop culture and Spanish references are constant and dizzying, but also used effectively.

Aside from the stunning prose and clear literary thematic planning, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao stands out to me for two reasons:
1) The history of the Dominican Republic laid out here, which is horrific and fascinating and definitely important, was completely new and strange to me. This is key to Diaz's themes of discrimination, erasure, and hatred, but also just an amazing show more learning experience for me.
2)The interlaced nature of the family stories here, where each member of the family has a unique tale interlaced with each other member of the family and yet distinct and heart-wrenching, is really beautifully executed. It's joy to read and care about this family.

I would highly recommend this novel as a modern coming of age story and portrait into the immigrant experience. It will challenge your perceptions with beautiful prose bringing to life beautiful concepts. show less

Oscar de León (nicknamed Oscar Wao) is an overweight Dominican growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women and fears he will die a virgin. This is especially important because of the male-dominated, swaggering, machismo culture of Santo Domingo and its diaspora, a culture that valorizes - by both men and women alike - sexual use and abuse of women. Díaz provides readers with a full panoply of profane and disrespectful Spanish names for women generally and for female genitalia in particular.

Díaz begins his story by explaining the nature of Fukú, which is “the Curse and Doom of the New World” brought into Dominican culture by the arrival of Columbus. [Santo Domingo, the capital city of show more the Dominican Republic, is the oldest continually inhabited European settlement in the Americas, having been founded in 1498 by Bartholomew Columbus, brother of Christopher.]

Interspersing the history of Santo Domingo into his story mostly via detailed footnotes, Díaz delineates the subsequent bad things that happened in the country, most recently with the brutal dictatorship of Trujillo (who ruled the Dominican Republic from February 1930 until his assassination in May 1961) - a horrible (and true) story.

And how does Oscar Wao fit into all of this? His life story was related to the history of Trujillo, and showed how powerful the Fukú was, “down to the seventh generation and beyond.”

About Oscar, the narrator explains:

“Our hero was not one of those Dominican cats everybody’s always going on about - he wasn’t no home-run hitter or a fly bachatero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock.”

In this one sentence you can see a prominent characteristic of this story: argot that mixes English, Dominican Spanish, and ghetto language. Because Oscar is also a science fiction and gaming nerd (where in his own mind he can be a Superhero), Díaz also includes a lot of esoteric references to that world as well. Díaz rarely explains his words, although usually you can figure them out from the context. But about half-way through the book, I found a website that provides an annotated version of the book, and it was a great help.

The story goes back and forth in time to demonstrate the effects of Fukú on Oscar’s family, and takes us from Santo Domingo to New Jersey and back, as many of the Dominicans in America return to the island in the summers.

Over the course of the years and his travels, Oscar gains more and more weight, becomes increasingly introverted, falls in love with more and more women, and has success with exactly none of them. When Oscar was in college, the main narrator, who is the sometime-boyfriend of Oscar’s beautiful sister Lola - tried to help him lose weight but Oscar was more comfortable with wallowing and day-dreaming.

As we come to the end of Oscar’s story (was all of the ending real? I have no idea) - and the conclusion of the book — I found myself singularly unmoved by anything except relief to be finished.

Discussion: I never felt close to any of the protagonists, although I couldn’t swear the fault was not my own; this culture and the characters depicted in it are not only very alien to me, but the attitudes toward and treatment of women is anathema to me. Even Oscar, harmless except for his intentions and depressed because he couldn’t bed many girls like every other male he knew, did not elicit sympathy in me. Nor did his family, who advised Oscar, in Spanish: If a girl doesn’t seem to like you, grab her “and stick it in her!”

There is also some superstition and magic thrown in, although those elements never take over the story.

Díaz is clearly an intelligent and creative guy. This book won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, but I didn’t like it. I did appreciate the skill that went into it, however, and the introduction to Dominican history. show less

So energetic, Yunior dropping sci-fi like he’s dropping knowledge/science and knowingly, familiarly, invitingly blasting off on flights of fancy and pure terror. Such a tender book, bravura writing/talking like skin grown shiny over deep wounds, tender in the painful and the gentle, compassionate senses alike.

I think, in terms of style and subject matter, I have found the book that is the most similar to what I want to write. Reading this has changed how I view style and character in a drastic way.

Diaz leans into the culture he knows so much in his style. He doesn't write for the average american, or the average dominican, or the average anyone. He writes for Oscar, he writes what he knows. And he does it boldly. The frankness with which information is presented is astounding, haunting, and brilliant.

And to focus in more on Oscar, I think he is what I've been missing in my writing. A true character that is a true character. Not someone played up to be a certain way, just unapologetically him. Very, very few characters have so much show more characterization. It is impressive, it is something to look up to as a writer, and it was so much fun to read.

One smaller detail about this is that you can tell Junot Diaz is brilliant through references. Very many cultural mentions about the Dominican Republic, New York, and overall latin culture, something I grew up with. The spanish infusion is smooth. I can speak some, but even when I couldn't word for word translate, context was always enough to piece it together. Diaz is also very well read. I caught mentions of about a hundred novels, from Watership Down to The Stand. And specific references too. Something I always appreciate.

Brilliant work, and something that should be much more widely read. In terms of latin american literature, this might be the top of the mountain. show less

Merriam-Webster lists wondrous as an archaic adverb meaning "that is to be marveled at", but the only marveling I'm doing after reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is once again wondering how a book won a Pulitzer Prize. I can also think of better words beginning with the letter b than brief to describe the so-called life of the main character - bizzare and boring come quickly to mind. I fit this book into the category A Book With Magic based on a web search, but find that attribution suspicious. There are apparitions in the story, brought on by horrific physical violence, and a supposed family curse more closely resembling the misfortune of being born in a truly awful third world country. I will give credit for the narrator's show more invitation to doubt the curse - most of the horrible events result from the stupidity of the victims rather than any resident evil.

This story is told by multiple characters, with the bulk being told by Oscar's sister's ex-boyfriend. If you only speak English this is a vulgar book, liberally doused with f*** and n*****. If you speak Spanish, throw on a heavy dose of gutter slang for female anatomy. While this gives the main narrator a personality, I found it distracting and - because he becomes a writer and generally upstanding citizen after the story plays out - inconsistent. It also isn't much of a story in the end. Oscar Wao is a derisive moniker given to an obese science fiction fan whose quest for love comes to an unhappy conclusion. If there is an intended parallel to "The Short Happy Life Of Francis Macomber," it's ineffective - at least Francis' life changed dramatically and he became his own man, rather than simply having a brief romance with his neighbor Ybon, a prostitute.

I'm also perplexed about the purpose of the narrator's unreliability. For starters it's too overt: we are told Oscar never even kisses Ybon, yet three pages later there he is kissing her. We are told they never have sex, yet at the end of the book there we reading about the loss of his virginity. It would be more effective if another narrator contradicted him rather than he contradicting himself. It also removed any last vestige of sympathy I might have felt for Oscar.

I read this book to the end on the hope that it would have some redeeming quality worthy of a major book award. I was disappointed. show less