The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

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It's a hit!

Wao is a collection of the funniest frickin' footnotes I have ever read in my life. I love the vulgarity. I love the nerdy references that I got.... (show more)

Wao is a collection of the funniest frickin' footnotes I have ever read in my life. I love the vulgarity. I love the nerdy references that I got. I love the nerdy references that I didn't get even more. I can't stop gushing about how amazing this book is. Wao is the perfect blend of oddly matched genres matching an oddly matched (and that is what makes them so believable) cast of characters. READ THIS BOOK!!!
I keep reading blogs and comment chains complaining about how this book contains some words in Spanish. This apparently makes some people sad. Some people apparently don't understand how to use the Internet to figure out the meaning of Spanish words, or better yet, how to use context clues to figure out what words mean. It's OK to think a little when you read. It often makes books better. Junot Diaz is the man, man. (show less)

 

 

by Facebook User

No, it's a flop!

Reviewer’s note: I’m not smart enough to fully “get” this book.
That said:
“It’s just a book, it’s just a book” I tell myself through gasping br... (show more)

Reviewer’s note: I’m not smart enough to fully “get” this book.
That said:
“It’s just a book, it’s just a book” I tell myself through gasping breaths and streaming tears. I identified a little too closely with this hapless, “disastrously overweight Dominican ghetto nerd” although I am neither Dominican, nor from the ghetto. Sniff, sniff, stifle sob. Our hero, Oscar (sniff, poor soul!), tells us, through the annoyingly ever-present narrator, Yunior, “anything you can dream you can be” (322). Sniff, sniff, bah-ha-ha. I mean, the title tells us the kid lives only briefly. He can’t last long and we know, from the Pulitzer sticker on the front, that his life must be somehow poignant, but for goodness sakes, why the tears? It’s the old tag line, “Oh, the humanity!”
After the tears dried I reminded myself that only 100 pages ago I was completely annoyed with the narration: it was too half-heated, self-absorbed, and distant. I don’t know any Spanish so I basically missed out on a good quarter of the innuendos and inferences. I did learn punta, ripio, fuku, tetas, fea, and effeminate through context clues, but had to look up lingam (which comes from French, actually) for the official definition. Words, generously peppered throughout the narration, I did not have to look up include, nigger, cock, shit, dick-sucker, all iterations of fuck, and vagina. Are you getting the picture here? Could it be that only in my late thirties I’m already the undisputed mayor of Fuddy-duddyville? One of my students said this book was the best she’s ever read. What is literature coming to? Apparently it’s to the bam-bam-bam of a cheap whore’s headboard.
Fairly early on in the novel I wondered why it won the Pulitzer, a prize supposedly awarded to an American author who shows distinction in literature. “Fresh, new voice”? Definitely. Distinction? Doubtful. If ever I had the distinction of serving on the committee, I would surely be fired within five minutes as this “literature” is not my cup of “distinguished” tea.
Dialogue drifts along without punctuation, seemingly endless footnotes interrupt the action, and an annoyingly foul-mouthed narrator will not leave me alone. He’s too “there”; when all I want to do is get lost in the world he jolts me back, kicking and screaming, into his selfish, limited perspective. I don’t like footnotes in my fiction and I like dialogue to be tagged. I don’t mind foul mouths but I want them to be in English. I am a lazy reader. Don’t make it hard for me! Well, I’m not that lazy, I read Faulkner. But hey, take it easy on me!
So I cried at the end like a little baby begging for amnesty for all our world’s nerds (myself included). I sobbed for all the lovers who have only the briefest moment in their sun before the hammer ultimately falls (a la Romeo and Juliet). So what. I had to WORK to get to that point, and in the end, it read a little over-sentimental. I think Diaz tried to show some of life’s truths but instead only created a unique voice for himself. The story’s cliché but the telling is new. So read it if you like tales of unrequited love, or if you want to try your hand at Spanglish. I’m going to go watch Twilight now. (show less)

 

 

by Jean Walton

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  I absolutely loved this novel about a young, Dominican-American man who's an overweight nerd. Oscar Wao's greatest fear is that he'll die a virgin. He doesn't fit in with his peers and faces ridicule from nearly everyone in his life including his mother. Diaz makes Oscar and the rest of his characters come alive on the page. He also provides a lot of information about the history of the Dominican Republic and how it shapes Oscar's family. He does a lot of this through the use of footnotes.
  ... (show more)

  I absolutely loved this novel about a young, Dominican-American man who's an overweight nerd. Oscar Wao's greatest fear is that he'll die a virgin. He doesn't fit in with his peers and faces ridicule from nearly everyone in his life including his mother. Diaz makes Oscar and the rest of his characters come alive on the page. He also provides a lot of information about the history of the Dominican Republic and how it shapes Oscar's family. He does a lot of this through the use of footnotes.

  Diaz uses Spanish and English to tell Oscar's story with a lot of humor and heart. He includes references to hip-hop culture and figures in science fiction. A reader unfamiliar with Spanish, hip hop or science fiction may feel a little lost at times, but those moments are fleeting because the ideas at the core of this novel are universal. Oscar's desire to be loved is central among them.

  This novel is the freshest thing I've read in a long time. I like that Diaz is speaking the language of my generation. I've also listened to several of the talks he's given online, and he seems like a real cool guy. Now I want to go back and read Drown, his short-story collection. (show less)

   

  by Marva Hinton on Feb 03, 2009 at 09:49PM

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  If you've always thought that novels about the lower middle class are anthropological exercises that unfailingly romanticize their subjects---if you think of literature as an eminently snobbish endeavor---, this book offers a very refreshing counterexample. Written in an original, autochthonous Dominican-immigrant voice, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has made me wonder what wonderful stories my high-school classmates, the ones that skipped school, read comic books, and spoke in as pol... (show more)

  If you've always thought that novels about the lower middle class are anthropological exercises that unfailingly romanticize their subjects---if you think of literature as an eminently snobbish endeavor---, this book offers a very refreshing counterexample. Written in an original, autochthonous Dominican-immigrant voice, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has made me wonder what wonderful stories my high-school classmates, the ones that skipped school, read comic books, and spoke in as politically incorrect a dialect as one can imagine, could tell, if only they sat down and wrote the way they speak. (show less)

   

   

  by Pedro Poitevin on Mar 03, 2008 at 08:06PM

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