My favorite books, albums, and movies are inevitably the ones that should absolutely not work, yet do. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz should not work at all. Just in order to get through the thing smoothly one would have to have a fluency in Spanish, a working knowledge of 20th Century Dominican history, and a doctorate in geekology (several nerd references had even ME rushing to Wiki). But instead the book shines, because of Diaz’s comfort in keeping his audience uncomfortable.
The story centers around Oscar a 300 pound nerd of nerds who dreams of being the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and finding true love. But rather than presenting a story about a timid, Spanish version of Ignatius Reilly, Diaz branches out and we get not only the account of Oscar’s brief life, but also his mother’s, his sister’s, even the grandparents Oscar himself never met. Diaz weaves the story of the entire Dominican Republic into the private story of this one young man.
As I said, Diaz does not make things easy for his reader. Often his characters slip into Spanish slang (or the equally confusing language of geek) without any provided translation, but even if you don’t know what exactly is said Diaz paints his characters so vividly you’re almost always able to figure it out without even slowing down. Plus, if something is important Diaz does prove willing to lead the uninitiated into the details of these cultures (for instance: taking the time to explain the significance of a certain WATCHMEN quote).
The books received glowing praise from the literary world, and what may be even cooler to the comic nerds among us is that Diaz even did a series of interviews with Newsarama of all places. The guy is clearly a nerd of nerds himself, but more importantly he’s a great new writer and it is definitely in your interest to start worshiping him now. Since you can’t quite spend your hard earned cash on me just yet, I hereby give permission to all the faithful to go check out The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
