The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

 

Thank GOD we are back to normal.!!!

Not that this was a hateful book,!! Especially not if one is an ex-DR-patriot, living in America because no where/no one else in this world would have you: and you had a story that might only be interesting to a few dozen Cabral family members; but otherwise, mind-numbingly boring to 99% of the “normal” book-reading population.

btw: I assume the overlaid picture to the left was Ybón: any agreements or objections? 

 

The anger in this book is palpable, acceptable for someone dumped into a ghetto across the Hudson River from the greatest City in the World: into the darkness of places such as Passaic, Elizabeth, and Jersey City. Who wouldn’t be angry.  This was the armpit of America. Welcome.!!

I almost bought into this “American Dream” when recruited to “emigrate” from England at a point where I had fully matriculated into English-nish.  “We” (I) had picked out a house in Parsippany, then the whole family visited to see our workplace as well, Morristown.  GOD intervened, by providing an over-night ice-storm, which shattered the wind-screen of our rental car and rattled me away from the New Jersey home comforts.  I share Díaz’s discomfort.

This is more Yunior’s story, with Oscar as comic/dramatic relief.  Yunior should have got a job with a local waste disposal company in Jersey City.  Why aren’t the Italians hiring the DRs anyway?  Their patois would match up perfectly.

We’ve had local foreign language before, in plenty of book club selections: we never like it!  Being foreign, by definition, means we don’t understand it, and are forced to learn it, just to understand the book’s premise.  It’s arcane to learn so much about Patterson, New Jersey DR argot.  This is the first book, and on a library recommendation list (!), that has so much PC-unacceptable language and down-right filth, as a key-part of the story.

O.K., Why did Dias write the book?

He wanted to move up from Jersey City to NYC.  Who wouldn’t?  And he did!

Those white, wine-swilling, elitist Barnard/Bryn Mawr book editor snobs ate him up like that season’s latest look in plaid jumpers or poodle pup lapdogs.  They, an hour north of Mecca, picked out an unwashed; an hour south of same, and displayed him for the winter 2008 season.  Junot (Yunior) enjoyed the seasoning from the blanca puerca and got his flat in the Bronx.

“Hey, Bro, K-no?”