Published
in 2007, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar
Wao is the first novel written by Junot Diaz. The novel focuses on the life of Oscar de León,
a young man whose mother was born in Santo Domingo, and his family. Jaime Perales Contreras of Américas magazine, Alice O’Keeffe of New Statesman and Jim Hannan from Le
Moyne College all agree that The Brief
Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is worthy of its 2008 Pulitzer Prize, but cite
somewhat different aspects of the work which contributed to Diaz’s receipt of
that prize.
Contreras
calls Diaz’s writing technique “interesting,” because Diaz “brings together
different genres of North American pop culture,” and uses that to “sensitize
Hispanic-American readers in the United States about the complicated series of
tragedies that the Dominican Republic has had to face over the years”
(Contreras 5). In his review, Contreras
also notes that Diaz’s Pulitzer is only the second to be awarded to an author
of Latin American descent (Contreras 5).
Contreras’s
mention of authors and their works I had never heard of makes it difficult to
figure out whether or not I can agree with his comparison of this novel to
those works, but I cannot agree that Diaz has achieved “celebrity status”
(Contreras 5), since I had never heard of him before I read this book. In fact, I doubt that most of the people I
know have ever heard of him or his books.
Unlike movie stars or television actors, authors and novelists—from what
I have observed—do not really achieve general celebrity status very often, even
if they win the Pulitzer Prize for their work.
If they do become celebrities, from what I have seen, they are only
celebrities within their professions.
Alice
O’Keeffe focuses more on the plot of the novel than on the award given to its
author. She does, however, agree that
the book is “immensely enjoyable” (O’Keeffe).
From O’Keeffe’s focus on the plot of the novel, and her assertion that an
individual is the product of his or her family’s history (O’Keeffe), it is
easier to see why Diaz received a Pulitzer Prize for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao through her review than
through Contreras’s.
Unlike
Contreras, however, O’Keeffe mentions that the novel has weak points as well as
strong ones. For instance, she mentions
that the “consistently sharp and startling” prose distracts the reader from the
“meandering” sections—narrated by Oscar’s college roommate, Yunior—which tell
Oscar’s immediate story (O’Keeffe), as opposed to the chapters which focus on
the de León family past.
On
another note, Jim Hannan suggests that the strengths which contribute to the
success of The Brief Wondrous Life of
Oscar Wao are the same stylistic elements which made Diaz’s short story
collection Drown a success (Hannan
65). That is, the novel is “sarcastic,
cynical, terse, and, at just the right moments, sensitive” (Hannan 65).
Hannan
mentions Diaz’s use of footnotes in the novel to get “his readers up to speed”
(Hannan 65), and seems to think these footnotes an asset to the novel. I have to disagree. I found the footnotes distracting, and thought
that the information given in them could have either been included within the
novel itself, or left out entirely. I do,
however, agree with Hannan’s assertion that the portions of the book telling
the story of the de León family’s history with the Trujillo regime is “biting
and justifiably angry” (Hannan 66).
Other
than my issue with the footnotes, I generally agree with all three reviews,
although with less enthusiasm. I can see
that it is a well-written novel, and that some of the author’s techniques are
new and that he employed them well enough to deserve a Pulitzer Prize, but it
was just not the sort of book I tend to enjoy reading. I am more like Oscar in that respect; I
prefer science-fiction and fantasy to historical fiction or tragedy.
Teacher Comments and Grade: I've lost the file with the teacher's final comments, as well as the grade. I know the entire project received a grade of 120 out of 125, so either this got a 25/25 or a 22/25, since the summary I did got a 23.
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