Prashant Bhalani Bhalani itibaren Vizzini, Province of Catania, इटली
This was assigned reading for my 20th century lit class. I didn't enjoy this book. I didn't get into the characters or the plot. However, this was also the class where we had little lecture, discussion, or direction on the reading, so I might have enjoyed it more with some support.
This novel is not as good as his short stories. I read another review of why can't he translate some of his Spanish in the many footnotes that are in this book, and I laughed, because it would have been helpful. Diaz has a GREAT habit of writing like he doesn't give a fuck. So, it is consistent with the narrators and characters he would make far out allusions, esoteric regional associations, and a plethora of other cryptic meanings without so much as acknowledging how cryptic they are. This is how he writes. He's a purpose driven writer, too. In Drown, he quoted an author, Gustavo Perez Firmat: "The fact that I/ am writing to you/ in English/ already falsifies what I/ wanted to tel you./ My subject:/ how to explain to you that I/ don't belong to English/ though I belong nowhere else." I think it keeps in line with the street mentality, too. Especially the black and latino mentality. Being African American myself, there's few things more traitorous in my culture than to discuss the problems of black culture with people who aren't black. There's a don't tell mentality that brings to light not a ill-stylistic point about Diaz's writing, but a purposeful one. So I was able to enjoy it. The book was ironic and yet not. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was not so brief since it explains everything that happened to the DR since the 1920's. At the same time, you realize you couldn't possibly understand how fucked Wao's life actually is without doing that. It's like bible; the whole original sin would not have made any sense if Adam and Eve weren't discussed (Not saying Original sin would have made any sense either way). Diaz can write. And I wasn't ever lost when he did not include quotation marks to his dialogue. Okay, somethings I didn't like. There wasn't enough dialogue. A lot of telling in this book. It got laborious sometimes. I kept feeling like I was ABOUT to begin the story any minute, but never did. The organization is maddening, and did get carried away. I felt stagnated at many parts, and I had to will myself to finish. Sometimes, a story is best and only best if left to go forward. Yunior's love affair with Lola seemed irrelevant. I didn't care that he felt heart broken. His foot notes were so TIME tasking! I didn't like them. I hate foot notes in general, but some of his were half a page. But the only good thing was getting to learn a lot about the DR.