WTG Devin

So I just finished The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, and it was pretty funny. I’m a fan of almost any book that uses the word “f***face” in it. The stuff about the Dominican Republic was really interesting, and the constant references to nerd mythos were awesome. Even though I’m the second most nerdy guy that I know, I barely got half of the references. Impressively nerdy. Although combined with the many Spanish sentences that appear in the book, I can see how a reader not proficient in Spanish/nerdese could be frustrated by this (coje that fea y méteselo – classic).

Unfortunately, the book suffers from what I like to call “Yellow Raft on Blue Water Syndrome”, where the main character and conflict get sidelined in favor of exploring other characters that have pretty much no point in driving the plot forwards, so the author can dick around and talk about history and symbolism. Geh. This really annoys me. It would be like if Shakespeare was like,  “Well, you know this Hamlet character and his conflict is pretty interesting, but let me tell you about his dad and uncle, King Hamlet and Claudius. Man did they not like each other. But it all really started with their Aunt Violet, who first introduced ear poison to the family.” NO ONE CARES. It’s like the author is saying, “Man this guy is boring, let’s move on to a character who’s new and exciting!” It’s almost as bad as a Dominican man switching women.

One of the worst examples of this occurs during the section about Oscar’s mom’s three great loves. There was 10 pages for the first guy, 30 pages for the second guy, and oh yeah that guy she’s sitting next to on the plane? That’s the one that she had kids with! Doesn’t she do the darnedest things? Let’s not talk about him at all. And none of it drove the main conflict forward. It was almost as suspenseful as watching dust collect. Look, it’s a bunny!

Don’t read this book if you have no interest in learning about the Dominican Republic and one of the worst dictatorships of the twentieth century. Don’t read this book if you can’t read Spanish and are easily frustrated by this fact. Do read this book if you want to hear one of the greatest burns to a fat guy the world has ever known (or I guess you could just message me and I could send it to you).