The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to Junot Diaz for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and I finished reading it a few days ago. The title character is a young fellow of Dominican descent who lives in Paterson, New Jersey. However, he is something of an anomaly in the Dominican neighborhood. He is a big reader, especially of comic books, science fiction and fantasy. He is also grossly overweight and socially inept. Dominican men are supposed to be suave with the ladies, but Oscar seems doomed to permanent virginity. I think this line sums him up best: "You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest."

The novel is narrated by a "watcher," whose identity we're not sure of until about half the book is done, with an occasional chapter from the point of view of Oscar's older sister, Lola. However, the main character of this book is really the Dominican Republic itself, which for years was under the iron rule of dictator Rafael Trujillo. There are a couple of long chapters about Oscar's mother and his grandparents, both of whom fell afoul of the military junta that Trujillo commanded. Diaz, who is Dominican himself, clearly feels that the stain of those brutal years lingers in the lives of Dominicans even today.

The book is fun to read, written in a loose style full of Spanglish. High-school level Spanish would come in handy (which I am without). If I knew the exact import of what it means to call a girl a "morena" (which Altavista translates as 'colored person') is an example of how much of the book was mystifying to me. And though I was a comic book fan growing up, and got a lot of references, there were a lot of references to sci-fi works that zoomed right over my head. But there are some lovely lyrical passages, including this one, that explains the title: "Who the hell, I ask you, had ever met a Domo like him? Halloween he made the mistake of dressing up as Doctor Who, was real proud of his outfit too. When I saw him on Easton, with two other writing-section clowns, I couldn't believe how much he looked like that fat homo Oscar Wilde, and I told him so. You look just like him, which was bad news for Oscar, because Melvin said, Oscar Wao, quien es Oscar Wao, and that was it, all of us started calling him that: Hey, Wao, what you doing? Wao, you want to get your feet off my chair?"

However, as I finished the book, I had to admit I felt a little let down. I suppose it's because Oscar's life wasn't all that wondrous. His ending comes in a grand romantic gesture, but it's not so much heroic as pathetic. Are we supposed to feel sorry for him? Throughout the book he pointedly refuses to improve himself, so it's difficult to get too involved in his story. The book best works as a historical look at Dominican-Americans and their torturous past.