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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

post #1 of 28
3/20/08 at 2:33pm
Thread Starter 
Every geek owes it to himself to read this. So goddamn good and loaded with LOTR and silver age Marvel references to boot.
It's the story of a Dominican American fanboy and his immediate family. The story hits the ground running and just when you think you know where it's headed, it spins off in another direction entirely. The writing is a glorious mix of slang, spanish, nerdspeak and beautiful lyricism (Oscar's teenage sister on describing a fight with her mother- "I wanted to take the length of my life and slap it across her face...").
Any fan of coming of age tales, Uatu, or good writing should pick it up.
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post #2 of 28
3/20/08 at 2:36pm
Thanks for the recommendation, Bob. I may have to check this one out after I finish The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna.
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post #3 of 28
5/13/08 at 10:05am
Thread Starter 
This short story gives you a good idea what to expect-
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/fea...i_fiction_diaz
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post #4 of 28
5/13/08 at 4:52pm
You should read "Drown", Bob, if you liked Diaz's novel. Great SS collection.
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post #5 of 28
5/13/08 at 4:58pm
Thread Starter 
I'll have to actually break down and buy it since my library doesn't carry it. In the meantime he's got about half a dozen New Yorker stories I can print out. I'll read them on the train and leave them behind like Chic tracts.
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post #6 of 28
5/13/08 at 5:04pm
Is he the new Chabon - the modern lit author that gets dweebs out of the paperback scifi section of the book store?

I wish someone would write a Harlequin romance with copious nerd references so we could see if it becomes the new board smash!
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post #7 of 28
5/13/08 at 5:10pm
Just put in a request from my library for this. Sounds like a good read.
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post #8 of 28
5/13/08 at 5:20pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by devincf View Post
Is he the new Chabon - the modern lit author that gets dweebs out of the paperback scifi section of the book store?
Judging by the response this thread has gotten, I'm going to say probably not.
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post #9 of 28
5/13/08 at 5:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by devincf View Post
Is he the new Chabon - the modern lit author that gets dweebs out of the paperback scifi section of the book store?

I wish someone would write a Harlequin romance with copious nerd references so we could see if it becomes the new board smash!
Hey, Johnathan Lethem works too. Y'all must have forgotten him.
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post #10 of 28
5/13/08 at 5:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by BobClark View Post
Judging by the response this thread has gotten, I'm going to say probably not.
Well, Mr. Slack, rest assured that your recommendation has moved this book from 'Wait to paperback' to 'Buy right now.' So the thread did some good.
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post #11 of 28
5/20/08 at 12:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by devincf View Post
Well, Mr. Slack, rest assured that your recommendation has moved this book from 'Wait to paperback' to 'Buy right now.' So the thread did some good.
Same here. I know we're supposed to all be subhuman illiterate retards on the forum, but the short story Clark linked totally piqued my interest in checking this one out. My input on it will be slightly delayed, of course, but it's getting damn close to finals and all of my current reading consists of Spanish textbooks, Psych textbooks, and books about race and racism.
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post #12 of 28
6/20/08 at 9:11pm
Thread Starter 
Diaz on Colbert. NOT how I envisioned him.
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbert...videoId=174353
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post #13 of 28
6/20/08 at 11:39pm
Damn good interview. The Lou Dobbs tracking chip bit was amusing.
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post #14 of 28
6/21/08 at 3:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by BobClark View Post
Diaz on Colbert. NOT how I envisioned him.
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbert...videoId=174353
Yeah, personality-wise, it would seem he's a lot more Oscar than he is the narrator. So shy that he barely looked up at Colbert for most of the interview. It makes sense, since you'd have to be kind of geeky on an Oscar level to write him as sympathetically as Diaz does.

Fantastic book, by the way. Thanks to you and Devin for mentioning it in this thread on the site.

I think McCarthy is the new modern lit author who gets geeks out of the sf paperback section. He just does it through grim, manly, stoic prose rather than through humor, romance, and nerd touchstones as Chabon does (and Diaz might).
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post #15 of 28
6/24/08 at 3:20am
I just finished it. I'm not going to get too spoiler-intensive, as many people seem to be using this thread as a basis for picking the book up, but I was sure that once the narrator started focusing on Beli I was going to become uninterested. How wrong I was. This could have easily been a 1,000 page opus on the history of the Dominican Republic, but it never felt like a documentary, more like a tale weaved by an old relative.
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post #16 of 28
9/29/08 at 1:52pm
Just finished this last night. Beautiful piece of writing.
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post #17 of 28
9/29/08 at 2:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattimus View Post
I just finished it. I'm not going to get too spoiler-intensive, as many people seem to be using this thread as a basis for picking the book up, but I was sure that once the narrator started focusing on Beli I was going to become uninterested. How wrong I was. This could have easily been a 1,000 page opus on the history of the Dominican Republic, but it never felt like a documentary, more like a tale weaved by an old relative.
Totally agree. I did quite enjoy this book. Taught me a hell of a lot about the DR (and weirdly enough my brother is doing missionary work there now).
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post #18 of 28
9/29/08 at 2:08pm
Yeah, I had no clue about the Trujillo regime before reading this. Terrifying history there.
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post #19 of 28
9/29/08 at 2:10pm
Literally as soon as I finished this book I went to wikipedia to research more about "El Jefe".
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post #20 of 28
9/29/08 at 3:57pm
Same here, though it first referred me to Castro. I would be very interested to read a more thorough history, or catch a doc. Since this is a movie board, and the book did win the Pulitzer, I'll ask, anyone think this would make a good/great movie?
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post #21 of 28
11/5/08 at 4:47pm
Strangely enough, one evening I was channel surfing and I found a movie with Salma Hayek and Edward James Olmos called In the Time of Butterflies that is about Trujillo and the horrors of his regime. I didn't watch all of it, as I caught it towards the end, but Olmos played a pretty vicious El Jefe.

As for an Oscar Wao adaptation, I'm not sure how that would translate to the screen. Maybe it's because I'm jealous of losing any of the story through editing, but I would prefer it if it would stay in the written form.
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post #22 of 28
11/5/08 at 5:18pm
Thread Starter 
A movie wouldn't make the written form go away. But it would give it a new shitty movie poster cover with a big NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE blurb. So yeah, on those grounds I'm against an adaptation as well.
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post #23 of 28
11/5/08 at 6:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by BobClark View Post
A movie wouldn't make the written form go away. But it would give it a new shitty movie poster cover with a big NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE blurb. So yeah, on those grounds I'm against an adaptation as well.
I didn't mean to put my comment in the same camp as those that decry remakes because they sully the originals.
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post #24 of 28
12/4/08 at 3:08pm
Just finished this. The ending, with the Watchmen quote, broke my heart. I did not want the book to end as I had grown so close to the characters. Each time the pov changed I was left wanting an entire book about that character alone.

Yeah, not sure how a movie would work.

Any controversy about the constant use of the n-word? Didn't bother me, and I know Yunior was supposed to be street tough and everything, but instances like Spike Lee complaining about Tarantino's use of it in Pulp Fiction makes me wonder how African-Americans would respond to the material.
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post #25 of 28
2/26/09 at 3:20pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirby Drummond View Post
You should read "Drown", Bob, if you liked Diaz's novel. Great SS collection.
Finally tracked this down. I especially liked Fiesta, 1980. I was a nervous child prone to car sickness, so I guess it spoke to me.
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post #26 of 28
3/25/10 at 9:55am
Thread Starter 
New Diaz story in last week's New Yorker! Dig it:
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/fea...i_fiction_diaz
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post #27 of 28
3/25/10 at 11:40am
yesssss

Love this guy. I still need to pick up his collection of short stories when I finish up all this other stuff I'm reading.
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post #28 of 28
3/25/10 at 11:45am
Man, Wao made me a lifelong fan of Diaz.
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