The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

"Winner"

"Diaz, like Roth, grew up very close to where I lived in New Jersey, and he represents to me the next generation of New Jersey writers who have dealt with these themes. They form a literary tradition to which I lay claim. The places he describes in his fiction are places where I grew up. In the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao , there’s a scene where Oscar Wao tries to kill himself by jumping off a rail bridge across the Raritan river. That bridge is just down the street from my house. To this day, I can’t take a train across it without thinking of that incident. As far as I’m concerned, it happened. Oscar Wao is very real to me. When I read Wao, I think, there but for the grace of God go I. My book on Calcutta opens in Ellis Island and then takes us on long drives at night down the same roads that Oscar travelled, journeys full of despair, that lead back to the places where we began. The main predicament, as I see it, for Oscar Wao, for us, is that we cannot start over in America, as new men, without history. For Roth, the past is the Jewish world of Newark, but for Diaz, as for me, the past is another country. That past haunts Wao, it literally drags him back into history, into the brutal dictatorial past of Trujillo and the Dominican Republic, and it ultimately destroys him. There is a poem by Cavafy that I quote in the book, “As you have destroyed your life here/ In this little corner, you have ruined it in the entire world.” Like Wao, I kept getting drawn back into Calcutta over and over, despite myself. But I’m still here, and writing. Maybe that saved me."

"Yes, this is a hugely original work of fiction; personal and yet panoramic in its view. It is a retelling of the history of the Dominican Republic and of the meaning of being a migrant, while at the same time being a personal story of the lives of Latinos in the United States. This resonates with one of the main themes that I am interested in, which is the idea that the United States is slowly but surely becoming the next Latin American country. The novel tells the story of a character named Oscar, a Latino living in a Jersey ghetto who dreams of becoming the next JRR Tolkien. But thanks to Fuku, the ancient curse that fell upon the Americas the day Christopher Columbus cracked open a nightmare door in the Caribbean, he may never get what he wants. This book is something like Mario Vargas Llosa meeting the Marvel Universe meeting John Steinbeck, Juan Filloy, Amos Tutuola and David Foster Wallace. It is a dazzling and funny melange; most of all, it’s epic, particularly in its interest in exploring playfully but rigorously the stuff history is made of and how we write about it. Once again, although fated by tragedy, Oscar’s story (and Diaz’s people’s history) is just farcical."

"Junot Díaz’s “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” is extraordinary."

"Not only are the scenes funny; the play of words in each sentence made me laugh. And like the best comic novels, it is really a tragedy."

"Three of my favorite books: the Dominican family in Junot Díaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.""