It won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction this year, which is given “[f]or distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.” But The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao does not deal particularly with American life, but with the fukú, or curse, placed upon Oscar’s family three generations back during the dictatorship of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. While Wao is a beautiful and distressing tragedy, its characters wholly subject to the inevitable heartbreak of fate, it does not at first strike one as particularly ‘distinguished,’ as its title character is a misfit often more contemptible than pitiable. Oscar is the extremest of extreme science fiction nerds, cowardly, obese, and lonely.
The narrative of Oscar’s life and the course of his family’s fukú is told by a ‘Watcher,’ a minor character – truly observing from the sidelines – whose role feels unfortunately irrelevant. [I always say that the narrator ought to be the character the story is actually about, the one who really undergoes the most change despite the presence of a protagonist, but I regret that such was not the case this time.]
Did I enjoy it? The science fiction allusions amused me greatly, but the many (many) Spanish phrases did not. If Spanish, or science fiction for that matter, is a language you do not speak, you will have missed a significant part of the novel. The heavy profanity and heavy sexual slang (in English and in Spanish) perhaps contributed to the tone of the book and were in keeping with the profile of the narrator, but nevertheless seemed excessive.
One part of me wishes to say that you should not have to be a bilingual Dominican-American reader of science fiction to love this novel – that a work of literature should be if not universally accessible than at least universal – but my vain, exclusive, ‘high art’-loving part rushes to defend Junot Diaz. If he wants to write a book that will require any reader to have experienced Tolkien before she is able to apprehend more than half its metaphors, then he can do it! And be awarded for it, too.
Again: Did I enjoy it? I think so, but less than I would have had I been part of Diaz’s intended audience. I do not call Wao distinguished in the way that The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, for instance, is distinguished, but trying to place a finger on the exact reason why is as difficult as defending Helm’s Deep from the innumerable force of warriors with the White Hand of Saruman on their helmets. Or something like that.
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