Revenge of the Dominican nerds
I first read Junot Díaz in the New Yorker. The story was ‘Alma,’ and I loved Laxmi-from-Guyana and its raucous, pungent style. But his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which began eight years ago as a story in the same mag, is a letdown. It’s a good read, and the brief desi and Hindi references are fun; both ‘Alma’ and Oscar Wao mention desi women the protagonists have dated (and cheated on). However, the book isn’t all that memorable and doesn’t live up to the hype. That the National Book Critics Circle Award went to Oscar Wao over Sacred Games has me scratching my head.
Oscar Wao is about a Dominican-American nerd from New Jersey who’s bright, chubby, hopeless and obsessive over women, and immersed in comic books and fantasy novels, especially Lord of the Rings. Oscar De León, the virtual namesake of a legendary salsero, survives high school and college with virginity intact, ekes out a living as a subsistence writer and comes face-to-face with the violent dictatorship back in la patria. Oscar’s homecoming will ring very familiar to anyone who flies back to summer in the desh. It gives lie to the truism that unhappy families’ miseries are unique 
Every summer Santo Domingo slaps the Diaspora engine in reverse, yanks back as many of its expelled children as it can… Back home, everybody! Back home! … the picking-up of big-assed girls and the taking of said to moteles; it’s one big party… for everybody but the poor, the dark… the Haitian… the kids that certain Canadian, American, German, and Italian tourists love to rape…
The beat-you-down heat was the same, and so was the fecund tropical smell… and likewise the air pollution, and the thousands of motos and cars and dilapidated trucks on the roads, and the clusters of peddlers at every traffic light… and people walking languidly with nothing to shade them from the sun, and the buses that charged past so overflowing with passengers that from the outside they looked like they were making a rush delivery of spare limbs to some far-off war, and the general ruination of so many of the buildings…
… a whole new country was materializing atop the ruins of the old one: there were now better roads and nicer vehicles and brand-new luxury air-conditioned buses… and U.S. fast-food restaurants… and local ones whose names and logos he did not recognize… It really was astonishing how much he’d forgotten about the DR: the little lizards that were everywhere, and the roosters in the morning, followed shortly by the cries of the plataneros… the mind-boggling poverty, the asshole tourists hogging up all the beaches… the snarl of streets and rusting zinc shacks… the masses of niggers he waded through every day who ran him over if he stood still, the skinny watchman standing in front of stores with their brokedown shotguns… the music…
Part of the success of this book, no doubt, is that it bridges two markets, fanböi comic geeks and lit fic buyers. Like everyone, fanböis love works which tell their story, but they’re also far more obsessive than the average reader.
Another part of the book’s charm is that it documents a community in New Jersey — Dominicans in Perth Amboy, Teaneck, Woodbridge, hunting grounds with desi overlap — which may not have shown up much in literary fiction. It’s worth nothing that In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Álvarez also dissected the U.S.-backed Trujillo dictatorship and was also nominated for the same literary award.
But what works in snippets fails in long form. It’s like someone who’s fascinating at a party but less interesting over a two-hour dinner. Díaz is obsessed with fucking, with declaiming the sexual prowess of Dominican men. A lot of the plot is melodrama about pointless, abusive romantic relationships. It’s charming in short burts but gets monotonous as a novel.
Despite the Sino-Dominican promise of the title, the book is laser-focused on Dominicans and isn’t actually very multi-culti, except for its polyglot slang. The eponym Oscar Wao is a Spanish-accented corruption of ‘that fat homosexual Oscar Wilde.’ There are just a handful of desi references in the book:
His two nerdboys, Al and Miggs, had… both succeeded in landing themselves girls… Al (real name Alok) was one of those tall Indian prettyboys who would never have been pegged by anyone as a role-playing nerd. It was Miggs’ girl-getting he could not fathom… Dude, you should see her, she’s beautiful. Big fucking tits, Al seconded. That day what little faith Oscar had in the world took an SS-N-17 snipe to the head… He realized his fucked-up comic-book-reading, role-playing-game-loving, no-sports-playing friends were embarrassed by him.
One of the key differences between the Dominican and desi diasporas is that Díaz’ book shows little immigrant neurosis. The motherland is a relatively short flight away, people hop back and forth often, and there’s a massive Dominican community in New York. The daughters and sons of this half-island of 10 million, less than one percent of the population of the subcontinent, still carry themselves with greater swagger. For immigrant anxiety, I point you to Gary Shteyngart’s howlingly funny The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and Absurdistan.
Along those lines, almost none of the pervasive slang, rendered in Dominican Spanish, Gygaxian Nerdlish and a sprinkling of Hinglish neologisms (’kaliblack, rekhablack’), is defined either explicitly or contextually. It’s a statement of fluency, literary style, confianza in the reader, market size — but also a point of annoyance.
Around a third of the Dominican slang and most of the Comic-Con geekery went over my head. This is a book where printing definitions directly above the words would have come in handy. The book uses footnotes liberally, not to define words but rather as elaborate, Wikipedia-style reference pieces. I appreciated reading the history of Trujillo, but the length of the footnotes pulls you out of the flow. These would have worked better as Sacred Games-style insets.
The beginning of the book is written simply. The story’s magical realism, involving a golden mongoose and the power of prayer, is more Steven Seagal than Gabriel García Márquez. But the style breaks sharply somewhere in the middle. Díaz begins using more elaborate, more self-consciously literary constructions, as if the book were written in parts, and he suddenly decided to go upmarket.
What works, works well: the novel’s confident, mashup language. An individual breaking down while his world goes to hell, like Graffiti My Soul. Sympathy for a nerdboy, like the autistic protagonist of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The slow reveal of the narrator’s identity, like Londonstani. Anita Desai liked Díaz’ work enough to help him land a teaching gig at MIT.
But it makes little sense to pick this over the vast, ambitious and better-written Sacred Games. Not only is that epic memorable, its passages on the geopolitical Great Game and its meditative bits on Vedanta put the novel in a different league.
Here’s an excerpt. Abhi was más enamorado with al kitab.
Previously: Glossary or no? The immaculate novel
on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008, 6:06 pm in Literature › 
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Excellent review. I haven’t read the book yet, but it’s on my (very long) list.
What did you think of Londonstani? At the end, I wanted to throw the book across the room.
great review Manish, thank u..even i didnot read this book..
sometimes why some books win awards they dont deserve is probably because may be it was to the jury’s taste..
I dont know if I want to read about romantic conquests of a man…abusive romantic relationships not my kind of reading..
men writing about romance is a lil weird.expect for nicolas sparks first novel ” Notebook” I could not read any of his other books..its a lil weird men writing about romance..unless it has a literary value to it like english patient..
sometimes books that give a totally new american born reader a new cultural education of a community or country different from them makes it more awardable if there is a word like that..
vikram chandra is no doubt a talented writer..I went through a couple of pages of sacred games..after reading maximum city by suketu mehta, to me there is no need to read sacred games..its just a more elaborate story of mumbai gangster life to me..the book length itself makes it hard for me to focus and read…plus story seems nothing new..but for the writing style of chandra story is not that appealing to me..but then I didnot read sacred games but for a couple of chapters u posted on ur blog long time back..so my judgements might be wrong..
but great review Manish…questioning whether books that are awarded deserve the award or not..
Dude you’re crazy. You wouldn’t know great lit if it bit you in the…
You’ve become a…critic.
Wanna fight?
:)
If you were a real geek you wouldn’t need definitions. You’d have read all the sources that he was referencing (by staying home reading fantasy books while everyone else was at the middle school dance).
Pooj: What did you think of Londonstani? At the end, I wanted to throw the book across the room.
It was a gimmick, but an effective one I thought. Like Fight Club, The Usual Suspects or The Sixth Sense.
Prakruti: story seems nothing new
I thought the Indian counterterrorism passages were fresh. With the nuke subplot, he was aiming for what in debate is known as a decision rule– a debate-ender :)
Abhi: You’ve become a… critic. Wanna fight?
Ouch. I think you just did :) But seriously, if you think Diaz is good, try Shteyngart.
I interviewed VC the morning of the day that the awards were being announced, and he was very chill about the whole thing.
I saw him that evening at the New School for the event and if he had any jitters (I did! the suspense was getting to me; fiction was the last category announced), he sure didn’t show it.
I really wonder what the film will be like…
thanks manish, I just read some ten chapters in ur blog and thought book was about gangs in bombay..
since the book is too big, and cant read all that do u know which chapters and pages have indian counterterrorism passages.. i will just get the book from library and read them..I bought the book but left it in india as it was too heavy..ebooks are better that way..
thanks re..u are always an education manish, always making me read interesting books..thank u once again..
I might just read those interesting passages u are talking about for now..that book is too big..
BTW I just got this interesting book “Revolutionary wealth” by Alvin and Heidi toffler, power couple whowrite great books on future every ten years.. future shock, power shift, third wave..I read war antiwar too..that was great..u might like Tofflers book if u like books on Future..
Y do ppl use ‘u’ if they r not txting, especially in a literary discussion about the merits of writing ?
He’s very mellow. I’ve never seen him jumpy.
Sacred Games is a more involving book, its scope is breathtaking, but Oscar Wao is a great read too. The characters felt so familiar to me. The footnotes came to be distracting, I couldn’t fathom half the Spanish bits and yes, the mongoose was a yawn. But. There was no hesitation on my part. I loved his world, how he told the story. It was just the two of us, and he was telling me shit like he’d never told anyone before.
thanks to you Manish, Iam reading right now this book and thoroughly enjoying reading it,.
After a long long time I am reading a book which seems very real, very human, very sensitive story.
He richly deserves the pulitizer and national book circles award.
Manish first time I have to say your review of this book did not do complete justice..
” It’s like someone who’s fascinating at a party but less interesting over a two-hour dinner. Díaz is obsessed with fucking, with declaiming the sexual prowess of Dominican men. A lot of the plot is melodrama about pointless, abusive romantic relationships. It’s charming in short burts but gets monotonous as a novel”
I disagree with your above statements Manish, this novel is not all about just abusive relationships or male conquest..It is raw real human emotions and mistakes..Iam surprised being a man he dealt with women and their suffering through bad relationships so well..
This novel no wonder won so many awards…it is very raw, very sensitive, very unique story very well written from all angles..
I will write more after I finish reading this novel.
Iam half way through..
I was thanking you last nite while I was reading this novel, you introduced me to yet another good writer..I owe u big time for all the literary pleasures and literary world introductions to new writers..
bad review, amigo. this is an excellent book. the novel is not about the sexual prowess of dominican men, when you consider that the main character spends the enture book trying to get laid, and does so on the last page, and a major portion of the narrative is fuelled by the three strong woman characters. seems like you have done a total misread of diaz’s work because you are looking out of sacred games tinted glasses.
chandra is good, but he is repetitive and his prose does not take flight, nor does he inhabit as many characters and their minds and emotions as completely as diaz does. finally what diaz does with language, his offhand, expletiveladen but at the same time intimate and beer-in-hand sit by my side narration does a lot of things at various levels. this is achievement of a high order.