The Unconventional, In-Your-Face Writer

Never have I read and enjoyed a book that pushes the reader into an unconventional writing that is almost uncomfortable and, at the same time, smooth and easily relatable. I introduce to you The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. This book blew my mind because of its stylized writing and its cultural story that intricately weaves Dominican history with an American immigrant experience. This book is not for the reader that likes the traditional fictional book of one voice, simple character identification and dialogue.

I was originally introduced to this author, Junot Diaz through the Colbert Report. Here’s a link to the interview I watched. Diaz’s witty comments and humility during the interview intrigued me, and I wanted to check out his book. Upon reading the first couple of pages, I was immediately hooked. Instead of blogging about the story, I’d rather focus on why this book is so unique and fun to read. There are three specific aspects to this book that totally impressed me. These three aspects are: the artistic use of language, the footnotes, and the author's honest opinions of the Dominican Republic's history.

This Pulitzer Prize winning book for fiction is unlike the others. Chabon, Eugenides, and Lahiri all have a melodic flow to their writing- their writing is absolutely beautiful. I would not classify Oscar Wao as beautiful writing. Instead, this 2008 Pulitzer Prize author writes in a raw prose; it’s full of curses and Dominican slang…and I loved every minute of it. There’s so much Dominican slang that at times I did not understand every word. On any given page, there can be up to 10 Spanish words. This might freak some people out. In fact, many publishers had difficulty with all the Dominican slang. They wanted Diaz to “tone it down.” Instead, Diaz stuck to his guns and kept the slang as is.* Obviously, he made the right choice by not listening to those publishers trying to fit Diaz into an uncomplicated mode (the "writer of color" mode). In a manner I could never accomplish, Diaz is able to balance this raw language with taste and intelligence. How he managed to do this is entirely beyond me.

I really loved being lost in this Dominican world- it was okay to keep reading without over-analyzing each word I didn’t understand. An example of this language is found in the first chapter titled “GhettoNerd at the End of the World” and here is an excerpt of it.

“Our hero was not one of those Domincan cats everybody’s always going on about—he wasn’t no home-run hitter or a fly bachatero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock.”

Another aspect that blew me away is the author’s use of footnotes. Traditionally, footnotes are used in a serious manner. As Diaz puts it, footnotes are a voice of authority. However, Diaz purposely does not follow this pattern. Pushing the tradition of this writing technique, Diaz uses his footnotes as a place of additional, common thought. He drops f-bombs in there. He talks about comic characters in there. He chews out the Dominican Republic’s past in there. He lays it all out in there- it is literal and almost defiant. The following is a footnote found early in the book:

“At first glance, [Trujillo] was just your prototypical Latin American caudillo, but his power was terminal in ways that few historians or writers have ever truly captured or, I would argue, imagined. He was our Sauron, our Arawn, our Darkseid, our Once and Future Dictator, a personaje so ass up….(dude had bomber wings, for f—k’s sake)”

This excerpt also exemplifies Diaz’s painfully honest descriptions of the history of the Dominican Republic. I know Diaz is not a historian; however, I do feel that there is some truth in fictional writings of historical time periods. Trujillo, the dictator who ruled the DR and mercilessly killed hundreds if not thousands of people, is a key component of this book and the lives of the characters. Even though Oscar Wao is a contemporary character living in the present, Trujillo’s shadow is cast over him, the other characters, and all the DR even decades after his death. It is an eerie concept and one that is very honest and incredibly sad in understanding how the history of a country, in all its horror and injustice, can still seep into the present and future. As Diaz states, “The past silently influences the present.”

Despite the somewhat chaotic nature of this book, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is completely refreshing to me. I'm always in admiration of a writer who is able to manipulate words into something that I couldn't even dream of doing. Cheers to a writer who writes for himself and is not afraid to push literary boundaries.

*Here’s My Attempt at a Footnote: How do I know so much about Junot Diaz? I went to see him speak at the Harold Washington Library on Sept. 12th. He had an interview with Victoria Lautman. Here’s the link to this interview. I went as a loner and sat in the 7th row, front center. I tried to get him to sign my book, but, alas, I was number 107.