On the outs with life (book reviews #42 and 43)

[aslant]

42. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz

If you follow Diaz in the literary sphere, you know he is a Controversial Author lately. Is he really as amazing as his Pulitzer Prize suggests? Is he a genuine nerd or does he just sprinkle in lingo like seasoning? Is he just writing chick lit but getting a pass because of a sprinkle of nerd references and Dominican flavor? (Well, this last is more a dig at his collection of short stories, This Is How You Lose Her, which I'm also reading right now, but it's a criticism I tried to hold in mind while reading Oscar Wao, because it's also relevant.) In short, I think he is worthy of the hype, but he's not some kind of god of writing -- his narrator got annoying sometimes, especially in the early history/exposition sections in Oscar Wao, which sound very spoken-word, sometimes to good effect but sometimes to excess, and after a while I felt like I kind of fell into his world of gender relations and wasn't that interested in critiquing them. Which is kind of awful! Because no one comes out looking good, in these books, not in love and not in lust! Also, I felt towards the end of the book that it suffered from its time ordering -- like maybe it used to be in a different order and was rearranged? Without having a substantial enough rewrite to make it flow? People getting introduced in weird order, stuff like that. For all that, this book drew me in, made me laugh, made me cover my face and read between my fingers, made me cry at the end, and the characters are genuine and genuinely well drawn. My only confusion was sometimes believing that Oscar was Diaz, and sometimes believing that Yunior was Diaz, and wondering if he was either fronting as more nerdy than he really was, or fronting as more of a player than he really was. (I still wonder this about Diaz, he seems like something of an enigma. I want to know more about what his college life was like, to learn whose experience he mirrored, if either.)

43. That's Not a Feeling, Dan Josefson

I can't recall where this book recommendation showed up, but it came in my ILL queue so hey, new book! I picked it up on Friday morning, finished it Sunday afternoon, it's a quick read. Dan Josefson's book is, allegedly, the last recipient of a David Foster Wallace blurb, and at the end of my edition there was a quick little essay interviewing someone who facilitated that connection. The story takes place at the Roaring Orchard School for Troubled Teens, and is full of darkly comic humor, following one boy's arrival (and departure and arrival and departure and arrival) and his experiences (often through multiple characters' POVs) in this surreal, possibly awful or possibly genius rehab school. There are confusing words, getting put in a wiggle, or someone's "furniture got popped" or someone is sheeted, or they have to turn in FIBs and all these other bizarro things that feel really, really real. Never answered is the main issue: are the kids really being helped? Is it all a scam? There are lots of uncomfortable moments where the kids are participating in some group "process" and it's clear the adults don't really believe in it, or maybe they do, and the kids do what they do out of a confused kind of loyalty or desire for it to simply be over, and no one knows whether the end result is real or happenstance. Like life, maybe? Yes, like life. This would be a fantastic movie in the vein of Ghost World, maybe a Wes Anderson flick, or someone willing to tell a kind of hazy upstate New York rehab school version of Virgin Suicides? It has a hazy vibe, and requires a massive mansion and a weird hand-drawn map of the school grounds (which is in the book, I love it). Yes.

Comments

[debok.livejournal.com]

i love these reviews. i don't often comment because you seem to post them always at night, and i'm more or less shot by 8 p.m. :)

i remember reading The Brief and Wondrous Life a few years ago and being totally put off by his fucked up sexual politics but also equally drawn in by the narrative. it was one of the few reads that i've been able to sort of suspend judgement and dig in and enjoy it, in spite of my initial annoyance.

he was at the u of iowa earlier this fall, and i wish i would've gone.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

It's confusing, the sexual politics (which continue unabated or even worse, in the short stories, so far), because I wonder, does he have to critique them in order to pass as a feminist? Or something? (Because he does identify as one, from what I've read.) Writing about them without any critique, is that what the critics don't like? Is writing about them at all, is that the act of writing the critique? If his characters would not critique the politics (beyond "oh god I am suffering so much because I have done this, oh well, here I go doing it again") then are we asking him to write something inauthentic? I don't know. I'm not sure what the establishment wants from him. Then again, it is doubly confusing because he is, at heart, such a fantastic writer. I don't have any trouble making these demands of outright mediocre genre authors, i.e. George R.R. Martin (my personal pet...uh...bete noir?).

Anyway. The other point to be made is that he writes over and over about struggling Dominican families and people, and not so very much about being a very highly successful author in the establishment who teaches at freakin' MIT. I dunno. Every writer writes where the stories are, though, I suppose.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Wao but I get a...sort of...Big Bang Theory vibe off it.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

I've never seen it, so I can't say. What are the qualities of this vibe?

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

A sort of "here I have said a geek word, Star Wars, now I am a geek" flippancy devoid of substance.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

Well...I think it does go slightly deeper than that. There were a few too many dark side references, and Darkseid came up a lot too, but I also wasn't sure if it was just a cultural newness for me. What does a nerd look like in poor communities, or in Dominican American communities? Different from the variety of nerd I grew up with and know, but no less valid. I think it was some of that cultural confrontation that was new, for me. You also see, in the book, two varieties of scifi nerd -- one who is closeted, the other who is unabashed, open, constantly mentioning it, etc. I thought it was nice to see that contrast. The narrator is more closeted in public, except in the text he drops so many references, it kind of undermines his "but I only did that in my spare time" attitude. So it was nuanced. It's definitely not as "blah blah [insert random nerd reference] blah" as some critics have made it out to be -- in fact now I want to find that one particular critique I read, to find out if the critic identified as a scifi/comics-savvy reader. I can see how it might be more jarring to someone who doesn't know a lot about it. I even felt out of my depth occasionally, I only vaguely know what Darkseid is through your writing.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

Well, right, I'm not trying to even do a "Geek Test" on it, since those are pretty clearly used by hierarchies to exclude people, you know? I'm just saying that is the impression I got. I haven't even read the thing.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

Over and above the whole geek issue, it really is a fantastic novel. I can't state that clearly enough.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

Huh. Seems too drama.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

Well, it won a Pulitzer. But then, I like that kind of novel usually.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

Not me! Though Gabriel Garcia Marquez surprised me.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

Oh this sums it up really well.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

I remember reading that one now. RIP GOOGLE READER. Or maybe that was in the post-Tumblr era. Anyway.