The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, 2007

There’s a very interesting novel circulating here at the library. What’s with the wacky title?, you ask. Grab the book and found out for yourself! You may be surprised. Let me just say that the book won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and elsewhere has garnered tremendous accolades.

Initially my reaction to Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was ‘Mmh, this sounds a lot like A Confederacy of Dunces.’ In many ways Oscar Wao is presented in a similar vein as that of Ignatius J. Reilly, the incomparable protagonist of A Confederacy of Dunces. Both characters are extremely overweight social misfits. They are outcasts—self-appointed pariahs. Not surprisingly, they are also geniuses of a rare order. They read voraciously, and their conversation reflects this. In part, their super intelligence separates them from the main swath of humanity, prevents them from interacting on a relatable level with people.

Oscar, as a young boy, first tapped into the science fiction and fantasy genres, or the Genres, as he fondly refers to them. This became his first and true love, and the rest of his life is spent devouring books, one after another, like cookies from a jar.

The thing that gives so much literary and emotional power to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is how the author weaves together the lives of all the characters involved. In this way, the novel becomes a very compelling montage. Added to this is Oscar’s Dominican heritage, which creates an extra dimension to the story. I found myself very engrossed in the many historical accounts of the Dominican Republic interspersed throughout the book, usually in the footnotes. So anyone who hastily zips past footnotes will miss out!

As a fan of fantasy and science fiction, this book is very appealing to me. There were several references to legendary fantasy/sf writers, such as Samuel Delany, Isaac Asimov, and Ursula Le Guin. The narrator also made numerous allusions to the Lord of the Rings books, and the juxtaposition of the fantasy world of Tolkien with modern Dominican Republic resulted in many humorous moments.

In short, there’s a very interesting book circulating here at the library. It’s called A Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

‘The Other Wind’ by Ursula K. Le Guin, 2001

‘The Other Wind’ is the sixth and final installment in Ursula K. Le Guin’s epic fantasy series. The first book, ‘A Wizard of Earthsea,’ appeared in 1968—over forty years ago—and immediately crystallized into a classic work of fiction. This last book in the series is every bit as fascinating as the first.

Myth is what Le Guin excels at. Myth is where her genius lies, creating that sense of another time, another place, long, long, long ago and far away. ‘The Other Wind’ is set in the world known as Earthsea, a vast network of islands spread out over a wide ocean. It is the tale of a young sorcerer named Alder who seemingly has no great skill at all. He was born especially with the gift to heal things, to mend things. He has the ability to rejoin and make whole: a broken knife blade, a snapped harp string, a cracked jar. At the end of the book we find that Alder’s gift will help to restore the balance of life and death itself. Along with Alder, many other familiar characters will play a role in changing the world, characters from the previous books, whom we’ve come to cherish, such as Ged, the former Archmage who lost his power while plugging a hole in the world, and Tenar, his wife, who was the priestess of the Tombs of Atuan in a far country; and Tehanu, their daughter, who was disfigured by dragon fire, and who herself we discover is a dragon; and Lebannen, the king, who, as a young man, a boy really, went down into death with the Archmage Ged.

The book ends with a tender moment between Ged and Tenar, which I thought was rather cathartic and wholly satisfying, as Earthsea began with Ged as a boy, and now it closes with Ged as an old man, choosing to live the remainder of his life on his home island of Gont with his beloved Tenar, rather than in luxury at the king’s palace.

With Le Guin there is always some surprise or other waiting mischievously around the corner. A jarring concept, a fascinating new character, a beautifully-turned phrase. Each novel, each story is suffused through and through with a ferocious imagination. For millions the name of Ursula Le Guin is revered, venerated, her literary legacy hallowed by the imaginative rapture that her stories invoke. In the grand scheme of speculative literature, Earthsea, to me, very evidently has a place among the best works of fantasy, and Ursula Le Guin herself has secured a place among the greatest writers of any time.

Only don’t trust my word; find out for yourself!

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, 1836-1837 (serialized)

Memorable Line

‘I saw he was drunk when he first came into the room, by his excited eye. Did you observe his excited eye, Mr. Jinks?’ –Magistrate Nupkins to his clerk, Mr. Jinks

The above quote is a pretty fair indicator of the general tone and feel of Charles Dickens’s first novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. And just in case the aforementioned quote is vague or ambiguous in tone, let me clarify: the book is hysterical.

When one pauses a moment to reflect on the fact that Dickens was only twenty-four years old at the time he was writing The Pickwick Papers, it is all the more incredible an accomplishment. Yes, there are plenty of criticisms. But mainly they are trivial objections. So what if the plot seems to ramble? So what if the narrative sometimes tends toward the implausible and exaggerative? Deficiency of plot is common amongst the great writers. Shakespeare, Dante, Milton—their characters veer all over the place. Besides, a loose plot often allows the writer ampler room to propound new issues and ideas, and—even better—to delight the reader with brilliant wordplay. Exaggeration is a technique that Dickens was best at, and I received an enormous amount of pleasure reading the zany adventures of Pickwick and company.

A brief synopsis. Pickwick, an illustrious retired gentleman, is the founder and chairman of the eponymously-dubbed society, the Pickwick Club. He spends his days traveling England with other members of the club, and with people he meets along the way. Many fascinating characters are introduced throughout the tale, but none so remarkable as Pickwick and his servant, Samuel Weller, who, I believe, is as brilliant a comic creation as Shakespeare’s Falstaff. Among other incidents, Pickwick is attacked by scoundrels, summoned before a cranky magistrate on false charges, imprisoned for refusing to pay a debt (on sheer principle!), and is instrumental in facilitating the marriage of two young friends. These do not seem like interesting anecdotes, but, of course, the context makes the difference, coupled with Dickens’s hilarious powers of narration.

For anyone who has never had the chance to read The Pickwick Papers—or anything by Dickens, for that matter—I would exhort to start with The Pickwick Papers, as it is his first and possibly greatest novel. What makes Dickens so great? Genius? Majesty of character? A sparkling smile? I don’t know if there is a recipe, or that a hill can comment upon a mountain. My first experience with Dickens was A Christmas Carol, some fifteen years ago. I roared with laughter as Dickens described Marley as being dead as a door nail, then admitted that he didn’t particularly know what was so dead about a doornail, in all truth, and that the analogy was perhaps rather specious. With a sense of awe I realized that I had come across a ferocious intellect, a towering creative mind. Sometimes I wonder if there is no great writer living today, anyone, at least, who has approached the heights of former writers like Shakespeare and Hawthorne and Tennyson. Writers like Charles Dickens.