mon, 02-jun-2008, 17:26

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

piper, the brief wondrous life of oscar wao

Life kept interrupting me while reading this book, and I wasn’t able to devote the energy to it that I would have liked. But I did enjoy it. It was funny, crass, and gave me at least a flavor of what life in the Dominican Republic (or probably any Latin American country ruled by a dictator) was like. The text mixed Spanish slang, nerd-speak, and street language all together for a very conversational style that was easy to pick up and read. One character’s place in the world was prescribed as: “our boy wasn’t no ringwraith, but he wasn’t no orc either.” The world of the Dominican Republic during the rule of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina probably seemed like the time of Sauron and his all-seeing Eye in Middle-earth. Without the happy ending, of course.

In a better world I would have kissed her over the ice trays and that would have been the end of all our troubles. But you know exactly what kind of world we live in. It ain’t no fucking Middle-earth.

Good book, and one which deserves (but will probably never get) a second reading on my part.

Meta Photolog Archives