THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO

By Junot Díaz

340 pp. Riverhead Books

By George. Sosa

©2008

A question then: Did Oscar Wao, fatboy from New Jersey (Paterson, specifically), “ghetto nerd” extraordinaire, possessor of an encyclopedic mind for all things comic book and science fiction, have to die for a country’s sins? Maybe not—maybe that’s taking things a bit too far—but he does indeed pay a heavy price for seeking the one thing that we all pretty much agree we’re all after— a little taste of that milk o’ human kindness. Even Hitler needed to hold Eva’s hand. And Trujillo? Ah, well, he’s another matter entirely (and this novel counts the ways).

But Oscar’s a good guy. It’s just that when you’re extremely obese, overly cerebral, and speak stilted English (“I am ill-fated. . . I am lacking in pulchritude”), it’s kinda hard to get the girls to pay attention to you. Let alone get laid. And therein lies the emotional landscape of our titular hero, an incredibly lonely character who navigates his mood swings and unrequited passions as best as he can. And if nobody can understand that well, you have to figure that any Dominican male who’s used to listening to New Order, citing

Gary Gygax or the Lord of the Rings novels is probably used to being misunderstood.

Junot Diaz’s newest, and deservedly celebrated, literary work, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” is (thankfully) very funny and observant as it charts the course of our hero’s romantic via dolorosa. I have to say that while I enjoyed Diaz’s previous “Drown,” I wasn’t as taken by it at the time as I was with, say, Paul Beatty’s doings in prose (check out “White Boy Shuffle” and “Tuff”), to name a contemporary. So it’s a wonderful to see that in the course of the decade that Diaz has taken to follow up his short story collection, he’s honed a very witty, and keen sense of humor. And it matters, dear readers, as good fiction needn’t really be a bore. Ask Don DeLillo, Barry Hannah, the aforementioned Beatty, Lorrie Moore or John Irving. Even Stephen King at the top of his game. The occasional punchline adds to the poignancy, yo. And said humorous insights often make for faster reading, life-long readers. It would almost sound formulaic, if it weren’t so elusive.

Not to say that I read this book quickly. Hardly. It’s not just the day-job, but there were a lot of issues that “Oscar Wao” was touching upon, that, as a Dominican-American, gave me pause. So I slowed down and savored it. “Oscar Wao,” with its mélange of styles, struts, voices and complexes, is as good a read as I’ve had in a long while. A solid, often bold and ambitious performance that earns the accolades it has received (The National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer for those of us sleeping under larger rocks).

(Or just busy working, working, working.)

You’ve got to give Diaz credit. The ducks were lined up for him and he could have obliged by delivering some soft-shoe, perfunctory work aimed at getting the sophomore-slump hex off his back (now there’s a literary fukú that’s been zafa-ed!) (Rimshot.). But he decided to be a tad more confounding, took his time, got to work and conjured a duo of Dominican-American alter-egos—one, a book-ish virgin with shades of Holden Caulfield (easy reference, but it’s in the room), the other his Bizarro World counterpart, Yunior, the novel’s erratic narrator, a lothario with a thesaurus, who’s Oscar’s sister’s (Lola’s), on-again/off-again boyfriend. (Now there’s a mouthful.)

In the process, Diaz has found a resonant and relevant voice for the Dominican/Dominican American zeitgeist. “Oscar Wao” reads like Garcia Marquez-meets Dave Eggers-meets Diaz’s own hyper-fueled version of Dominican bochinche. He weaves these and other pop-cultural influences into a captivating thread of romance, hipster-magical-realism and satire amid heaps of political oppression and emotional desperation. And, lest ya’ll forget, it’s funny too.

Here’s an exchange where Lola, inquires about Oscar’s growing interest in Ana Obregon, a “pretty, loudmouthed gordita who read Henry Miller”:

So she has a boyfriend? Lola asked him suddenly. Yes, he said. You should back off for a little while.

Did he listen? Of course he didn’t. Available any time she needed to kvetch. And he even got—joy of joys!—the opportunity to meet the famous Manny, which was about as fun as being called a fag during a school assembly (which had happened). (Twice.) Met him outside Ana’s house. He was this intense emaciated guy with marathon-runner limbs and voracious eyes; when they shook hands Oscar was sure the nigger was going to smack him, he acted so surly. Manny was muy bald and completely shaved his head to hide it, had a hoop in each ear and this leathery out-in-the-sun buzzardly look of an old cat straining for youth.

So you’re Ana’s little friend, Manny said.That’s me, Oscar said in a voice so full of cheerful innocuousness that he could have shot himself for it. Oscar is a brilliant writer, Ana offered. Even though she had never once asked to read anything he wrote.

He snorted. What would you have to write about? I’m into the more speculative genres. He knew how absurd he sounded. The more speculative genres. Manny looked ready to cut a steak off him. You sound mad corny, guy, you know that?

Oscar smiled, hoping somehow an earthquake would demolish all of Paterson.

I just hope you ain’t trying to chisel in on my girl, guy. Oscar said, Ha-ha. Ana, flushed red, looked at the ground. A joy.

At a reading in Central Park last month, during which he announced the imminent release of the Spanish translation of “Oscar Wao”(he said August, Amazon says September), Diaz charmed a crowd heavily peppered with Dominicans of all ages. It was a pretty healthy turnout and Diaz was in fine, humorous and mostly contemplative form as he shared his thoughts during a post-reading q&a session. The past, he said, has to be addressed in order for the country (and by extension, the country’s arts), to move forward.

In “Oscar Wao,” the D.R. of yore is served up as a kind of surreal cauldron, with its bogeyman-of-bogeymen, Trujillo, the otherworldly overlord. Unabashedly modern and confrontational, Diaz beats back at the inherited ideas of entrenched political corruption within a culture whose leaders have for years treated the D.R. more as a country club than an actual country. In its slyly footnoted and tangential way, “Oscar Wao,” reads like an alternately comic and tragic reckoning. At times, too, like an exorcism. All fukús be f***ked, it all but proclaims as it wind up the travails of Oscar’s grandmother La Inca, his mother Beli, Lola and grandfather Abelard. With “Oscar Wao,” Diaz has charted the course of a perceived curse’s grip upon a Dominican family in particular, a culture in general.

It’s a great thing when history is refracted in a manner that makes it accessible and yet anything but fangless. (I’m thinking too of the book I’m currently reading, Howard Zinn’s, “A People’s History of American Empire. Adapted as a graphic novel, yo!) So to read “Oscar Wao” is to applaud Diaz’s willingness to be engaged with the real--and metaphorical--fukús at the very heart of the Dominican story. As much as it is the tale of a family’s history from the island of Quisqueya to the urban environs of Paterson, New Jersey—and back--“Oscar Wao” is also about imperialism and its aftermath. About decades of social neglect and oppression and the moral and mental decay that are the expected by-products of same.

So a couple more questions: Can a mere novel have healing powers? And when it looks homeward in reflection, and sagely facilitates a long-needed meditation on the shame, horror and legacy of a collective trauma, should it not then be appreciated? Discuss amongst yourselves.

And yeah, so it’s not perfect. That’s not what I seek in literature, these days. (Life’s too short.) There are fits-and-starts in the writing that, at times, jarred me out of the narrative flow--leaps in diction that made me question the narrator’s credibility, or resent his intrusions--but towards the end of Cabral family saga, as Yunior reveals more about himself and his own fate, these became minor qualms.

What’s resonates most is that this novel is about the potential for a group of people (a family, a country), to acknowledge that having had their humanity partially collapsed, they may yet find a way to piece things together and repair—if not entirely restitute—in a manner that is of service to a new generation of dreamers, thinkers, novelists, artists, fill-in-the-blank.

And with this as its mission (or at least one of them), “Oscar Wao,” stalks confidently into the Republic’s subconscious and announces itself, with a punch to gut and heart, as a keeper. Diaz may not completely succeed in casting off the uber-fukú that seems to enshroud the D.R. to this day—we’ll need an arts movement for that--but you can’t hate the brother for making a vigorous and largely successful attempt to shake off, as Walter Mosley once put it, “the dead hand of history.” Enjoy.

George Sosa lives, writes and occasionally jogs in New York City.