Brief Wondrous Hope: A Glimpse Into the Realm of the Postmodern Nerd
July 24th 2008 11:09
Did you grow up playing role-playing games? Do you have an addiction as much to the written page as to scarfing down daily over-portions of torturous but ever-comforting snack food? Do you have a feeling of kindred spirituality with Tolkien, a haggard-hearted, moon-eyed longing for love, or dream to swiftly jettison your mind into oblivion, the great beyond?
If any or all of these sound like you – and if you happen to have developing world immigrant heritage to reference – then, my spare tyre and thicker-than-Coke-glass-lense s-brandishing brethren, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a book that will set fire to the ethereal essence of your self-proclaimed ‘old soul’.
Oscar de Leon, also known as Oscar Wao – a nickname derived from the Latin American pronunciation of Oscar Wilde – is a “ghetto nerd” that represents a sort of ultimate in a postmodern protagonist. Rather than descending into cliché, it is this which lends to his appeal. We relate to him as an underdog, a character perfectly reflective of his time, but also because we enjoy a guilty laugh at his particular sad predicament, and most likely, our own.
An overweight, over-read science fiction fan-boy and wannabe writer, he was born into the hyper-macho Dominican culture and right into the flame of his family’s fukú – an everlasting curse to end all other everlasting curses: “the Curse and Doom of the New World”.
It is Oscar’s “only real friend”, the laidback, educated, wisecracking player-homeboy Yunior, who narrates most of the story, in what he hopes is a zafa, an antidote to the fukú curse. Through Yunior, part-time boyfriend to Oscar’s older sister, Lola, Diaz’s narration storms into even the stoniest heart and lightens both the reception and telling of a story that covers the heaviest of subject matter – Trujillo’s totalitarian regime, violence, cold-blooded murder, sex, heartache and heartbreak – and in doing so, does not diminish the innocence of Oscar’s appeal.
Yunior takes us hurtling through three generations of apparently-cursed existence for Oscar’s family – briefly and briskly interrupted by the hurricane of Lola’s penetrating contemporary feminist voice – in a narrative flow which echoes of sci-fi and revenge movies, and streetwise rap music; it is no ordinary immigrant chronicle or Bildungsroman.
The novel is not exclusively about Oscar, Lola and Yunior’s coming-of-age tales in Paterson, New Jersey, but the circumstances that surround them and how they come to be. It is Oscar’s particular tale of woe, though – among the masterfully interwoven stories of his mother, Hypatia Belicia Cabral and her father, Abelard Luis Cabral in the Dominican Republic, as well that of Yunior and Lola – which structure the novel and galvanise the work as a whole.
Belicia, described in poetic symmetry as “a girl so tall your leg bones ached just looking at her/so dark it was as if the Creatrix had, in her making, blinked”, like Lola, experienced Santo Domingo sabbaticals with Belicia’s “mother-aunt”, La Inca, which shaped their respective identities and aided their progression into womanhood. It is her “three heartbreaks” that bridge the generational gap and blend the fukú-ridden tales of the three generations. Belicia, the third daughter of Abelard Luis (whose “Chiste Apocalyptus”, apparent slander of the Trujillo regime originally started the family’s fukú), grows into the quintessential immigrant mother, whose tales of woe are so pure and unjust that her children cannot hope to live up to them, and can only try and ward off the guilt of her upbringing as well as their own “Jersey malaise”.
It is these tales, told by bold and unique characters, which help Oscar’s story to surpass the recent misadventures Vernon Gregory Little and stand twitching nervously beside Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield on the podium of literature’s greatest adolescent heroes. They are the supporting cast, the lifeblood of the story, while Oscar is the pulsating heart.
Yunior, also narrator of Diaz’s acclaimed work of short stories Drown (1996), is a bit older in Oscar Wao, and his particular Dominican brand of cracking wise bursts from the pages. In a gloriously brash voice grounded in hearty doses of self-deprecation, Diaz's humanity rings as true as the street-soul of the best hip-hop music and stands tall among the greatest literature of the past decade.
Calling all nerds, this is the 350-pager of your generation, of your dreams, and probably, of your nightmares. Its uncompromising truth, born from the perspective of Oscar the outsider and those that look down on him, is irresistible.
Diaz has captured the innermost feelings of two generations of introverted, laughed-at and often glorified closet-brainiacs, but also of immigrant families and most importantly, gives hope and a voice to underdogs everywhere.
Oscar Wao is worthy of its Pulitzer Prize and growing status as one of the novels of its generation.
Fukú me, it’s a blistering read.
If any or all of these sound like you – and if you happen to have developing world immigrant heritage to reference – then, my spare tyre and thicker-than-Coke-glass-lense s-brandishing brethren, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a book that will set fire to the ethereal essence of your self-proclaimed ‘old soul’.
Oscar de Leon, also known as Oscar Wao – a nickname derived from the Latin American pronunciation of Oscar Wilde – is a “ghetto nerd” that represents a sort of ultimate in a postmodern protagonist. Rather than descending into cliché, it is this which lends to his appeal. We relate to him as an underdog, a character perfectly reflective of his time, but also because we enjoy a guilty laugh at his particular sad predicament, and most likely, our own.
An overweight, over-read science fiction fan-boy and wannabe writer, he was born into the hyper-macho Dominican culture and right into the flame of his family’s fukú – an everlasting curse to end all other everlasting curses: “the Curse and Doom of the New World”.
It is Oscar’s “only real friend”, the laidback, educated, wisecracking player-homeboy Yunior, who narrates most of the story, in what he hopes is a zafa, an antidote to the fukú curse. Through Yunior, part-time boyfriend to Oscar’s older sister, Lola, Diaz’s narration storms into even the stoniest heart and lightens both the reception and telling of a story that covers the heaviest of subject matter – Trujillo’s totalitarian regime, violence, cold-blooded murder, sex, heartache and heartbreak – and in doing so, does not diminish the innocence of Oscar’s appeal.
Yunior takes us hurtling through three generations of apparently-cursed existence for Oscar’s family – briefly and briskly interrupted by the hurricane of Lola’s penetrating contemporary feminist voice – in a narrative flow which echoes of sci-fi and revenge movies, and streetwise rap music; it is no ordinary immigrant chronicle or Bildungsroman.
The novel is not exclusively about Oscar, Lola and Yunior’s coming-of-age tales in Paterson, New Jersey, but the circumstances that surround them and how they come to be. It is Oscar’s particular tale of woe, though – among the masterfully interwoven stories of his mother, Hypatia Belicia Cabral and her father, Abelard Luis Cabral in the Dominican Republic, as well that of Yunior and Lola – which structure the novel and galvanise the work as a whole.
Belicia, described in poetic symmetry as “a girl so tall your leg bones ached just looking at her/so dark it was as if the Creatrix had, in her making, blinked”, like Lola, experienced Santo Domingo sabbaticals with Belicia’s “mother-aunt”, La Inca, which shaped their respective identities and aided their progression into womanhood. It is her “three heartbreaks” that bridge the generational gap and blend the fukú-ridden tales of the three generations. Belicia, the third daughter of Abelard Luis (whose “Chiste Apocalyptus”, apparent slander of the Trujillo regime originally started the family’s fukú), grows into the quintessential immigrant mother, whose tales of woe are so pure and unjust that her children cannot hope to live up to them, and can only try and ward off the guilt of her upbringing as well as their own “Jersey malaise”.
It is these tales, told by bold and unique characters, which help Oscar’s story to surpass the recent misadventures Vernon Gregory Little and stand twitching nervously beside Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield on the podium of literature’s greatest adolescent heroes. They are the supporting cast, the lifeblood of the story, while Oscar is the pulsating heart.
Yunior, also narrator of Diaz’s acclaimed work of short stories Drown (1996), is a bit older in Oscar Wao, and his particular Dominican brand of cracking wise bursts from the pages. In a gloriously brash voice grounded in hearty doses of self-deprecation, Diaz's humanity rings as true as the street-soul of the best hip-hop music and stands tall among the greatest literature of the past decade.
Calling all nerds, this is the 350-pager of your generation, of your dreams, and probably, of your nightmares. Its uncompromising truth, born from the perspective of Oscar the outsider and those that look down on him, is irresistible.
Diaz has captured the innermost feelings of two generations of introverted, laughed-at and often glorified closet-brainiacs, but also of immigrant families and most importantly, gives hope and a voice to underdogs everywhere.
Oscar Wao is worthy of its Pulitzer Prize and growing status as one of the novels of its generation.
Fukú me, it’s a blistering read.
The novel in question: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
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