The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I finally finished this last night, and while I did have some problems with it, overall I enjoyed it. Amazon has some good, non-spoilery summaries of the plot, so I'll just move on to my own impressions here.

It reminded me somewhat of Middlesex, in that in addition to the main character's story, it also tells the story of the parents and grandparents. Oscar Wao is only a bit over 300 pages, and yet I never felt like it was rushed, even with a story spanning three generations (and giving time to Oscar's sister Lola as well, and later in the book even the narrator becomes a character in the story, though he is still focusing on Oscar and Lola rather than himself). Diaz has a nice, tight style that I really like. Very conversational, but not padded. It felt a little slow at first, and it was easy to put down and walk away from for days at a time, but about a third of the way in, I started finding it really hard to put down.

It almost feels like it's written in three languages. English, of course, with a ton of Spanish words and phrases (which are easy enough to figure out via context if you don't know Spanish (or like me, have forgotten most of what you learned)), but there are also so many geek references thrown in that it feels like that's a third language as well. I really enjoyed the style of it.

There are a lot of footnotes, which I both liked and disliked. I liked them, because I did end up learning a lot about the history of the Dominican Republic, which I sadly knew nothing about before (the most I can say is that the name Trujillo rang a bell, though I would not have been able to tell you what country he had ruled). But I do dislike getting interrupted in the middle of reading to have to go read a footnote.

I found the sexism and fat-hate really hard to take. There's a lot of casual misogyny and fat-hate going on throughout the story, from pretty much everyone, even those who are supposed to be sympathetic.

Oscar himself is a gross stalker. He's not gross because he's fat or because he's a nerd (the reasons the narrative gives), but because of his entitlement and his inability to see women as actual people worth his time if they're not going to fall in love/have sex with him. (Oh, and I almost forgot the part where Oscar, despite being overweight and having no social skills, refuses to look twice at anyone he deems "too ugly" for him, even if they get along really well and are good friends.) The narrator reinforces this view, when he talks about Oscar having a friend who has a boyfriend, and wondering what it is that guys get out of such friendships since they know they can't sleep with the girls. God forbid a guy actually befriend a girl because they have stuff in common and the friendship itself is interesting. If he's not banging her, it's a worthless effort! And it's not a one or two time thing. Degrading language about women can be found on pretty much every single page, often from the narrator himself. The fat-hate is pretty much integral to the story: Oscar is a loser because he's fat and a nerd. (And the way he was written about was the way a thin person typically thinks of fat people. His weight was given as 300 pounds, but you'd think, from the way he's described, that he was double that. And yet when he loses twenty pounds at one point, he's suddenly visibly thinner and looking better.)

I wanted to really love this book, and I do like it. The story was excellent, as was the writing, but I really didn't like all the rest of the crap that was floating around. I liked Lola a lot, but none of the guys were remotely sympathetic. I'm not sure why Oscar's life was wondrous at all.

Comments

[anatomiste.livejournal.com]

Argh! A bunch of people on my friends list were so excited by this book when it came out that I actually bought myself a nice hardback copy, but then I got sidetracked after the fifth footnote about Trujillo and put it down.

Then I started hearing things about its view of women and fat...and now here are you telling me how prevalent that is...

I don't know whether to make myself read it because it's a Spanglish novel about geeks (yay!) or try and return it because I know it'll make me angry anyway.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I don't know what to say. :( I did enjoy it, because so much about it was really right up my alley, and I'll definitely be checking out his book of short stories in hopes that this is just a fluke and not representative, but yeah. I heard a lot of hype and was really excited, too, and sad that it wasn't all I'd hoped for.

I would say at least give it another try before returning it.

[popfantastic.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I'm not sure the novel approves of either the pervasive fat-phobia or misogyny. Oscar is clearly presented as much, much more than the world perceives him to be based on his weight, and for a book with a titular male character, I was so pleasantly surprised to find that the story was as much about the women of Oscar's family and how they end up creating and influencing his life than it was about Oscar himself.

No doubt, there are a lot of characters in there with very flawed views, including some of the protagonists, but I didn't get the sense that Diaz was advancing those views.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, he chose to have Yunior as the narrator, and to make Yunior the way he is. He is in many ways just like Diaz (compare Diaz's bio to Yunior and they're pretty much exactly the same); why did he choose to make his alternate self so incredibly misogynistic?

I did like the stories about Beli and Lola more than the story about Oscar, but I can't help wondering what was supposed to be so wondrous about Oscar or his life when he was such an ass.

[popfantastic.livejournal.com]

I'm really disinclined to overidentify Yunior with Diaz, but I can think of many reasons to make Yunior incredibly misogynist, including commenting on how sad it is that even Yunior (who in many ways is more likable than Oscar, and certainly one of the more reflective characters in the novel) has absorbed it from the culture(s) in which he operates.

You might like this recent review (http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2008/07/brief-wondrous-life-of-oscar-wao-by.html), which addresses some of the misogyny and racism in the book, as well as what might make Oscar's life potentially wondrous.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. I like that reading of it. I still feel like regardless of what Oscar may have learned in the end, he still "got the girl" through being a creepy stalker and putting her life and his family's lives in danger as well as his own, so it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

[livrelibre.livejournal.com]

Sorry to butt in but thank you for that link and for this discussion; this book really hit me where I lived and I loved it, despite and because of the problematic nature of it and this explains why, to me and the world, far more coherently than I did in my rambling post on it. Plus it's given me the discussion I wanted about this. Thanks!

[popfantastic.livejournal.com]

No apology necessary!

I actually think Oscar Wao is a fine example of how to write racism and misogyny without advancing it even implicitly, which is why I like that review. It wouldn't have had nearly the same impact if, for instance, Yunior was a perfectly "PC" narrator (even supposing such a hypothetical voice is possible, which arguably it's not).

In the end, I don't see the "problematic" bits as problematic at all, nor do I think we need to preface our feelings on the book with "I liked this, but..." The very strong presence of racism and sexism are absolutely necessary to Diaz' exploration of oppressions, which I think is one of the novel's strengths. I suspect we react strongly because often so often the sexist and fatphobic remarks especially are coming from from characters we like, and from characters who are themselves oppressed, and we're forced to deal with that -- which is so often the case in the real world.