The blog is going away but the reviews are not. You can find them here in the online print edition.
Home > ATLarts > Archives > 2008 > April > 10 > Entry
The importance of being “Oscar”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’m going to have to go buy “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.”
Junot Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for this novel, which tells the story of an obese boy and his bizarre Domincan family in New Jersey. In addition to the Pulitzer, it won the National Book Critics Award.
It’s Diaz’s first novel; he’s 39, and worked on it for 10 years. He’s the second Latino author to win a Pulitzer for fiction, following Oscar Hijuelos, for 1989’s “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.”
Here’s the first paragraph of Michiko Kakutani’s review in the New York Times from September 2007: Junot Díaz’s “Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” is a wondrous, not-so-brief first novel that is so original it can only be described as Mario Vargas Llosa meets “Star Trek” meets David Foster Wallace meets Kanye West. It is funny, street-smart and keenly observed, and it unfolds from a comic portrait of a second-generation Dominican geek into a harrowing meditation on public and private history and the burdens of familial history. An extraordinarily vibrant book that’s fueled by adrenaline-powered prose, it’s confidently steered through several decades of history by a madcap, magpie voice that’s equally at home talking about Tolkien and Trujillo, anime movies and ancient Dominican curses, sexual shenanigans at Rutgers University and secret police raids in Santo Domingo.
OK, now I’m a little nervous. But I’ll try it anyway.
And here’s an interview with Diaz with Newsweek, conducted before he got the Pulitzer. Be sure and read all the way to Page 3 on the website, when he launches into an outrageous riff comparing America today to the Pequod in “Moby Dick.”
Anyone out there want to share a little love for Oscar Wao? Or are you intimidated by a review like Kakutani’s that makes the novel sound rewarding but like hard work?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
Comments
By Booklover
April 10, 2008 8:21 AM | Link to this
Sorry, I didn’t love Oscar Wao. I had high hopes, but I didn’t think Diaz really pulled off the street magical realism he was aiming for. I am liking Michael Chabon’s “Gentlemen of the Road” right now.
By Phil Kloer
April 10, 2008 9:44 AM | Link to this
“street magic realism.” What a great phrase. Is that original, Booklover? I also love Chabon, although I havent read Gentlemen of the Road. Ive skimmed a new book of essays he has coming out soon titled “Maps and Legends” and plan to post a blog on that soon.
By Maria
April 10, 2008 5:03 PM | Link to this
I really enjoyed Oscar Wao — the multilinguistic wordplay, all the cultural references, and just the experience of spending a while in the company of Oscar and his family. It was really a trip. It was unlike anything else I’ve read, well, ever, and it’s very different stylistically from Diaz’s short story collection Drown.
Reading it took some investment of time and mental energy, but it’s rare for me to pick up a book that doesn’t tax me in that kind of way. I suppose I’m a bit of a literary masochist.