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It would almost be redundant – and probably pitiful, too – to try and summarize The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in a single, obligatory paragraph that precedes an interview with its author, Junot Diaz. The book, which won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is deserving of long, in-depth coverage. And it’s gotten some: Here, here, and here are just a few pieces worth reading. But of course, far more important than the criticism (and also, sigh, this interview) is the novel itself.

Here’s my paragraph, anyway: We follow (loosely) the story of Oscar, a nerdy virgin not unlike Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of The Confederacy of Dunces (another Pulitzer-winner). Oscar has a unique ability to fall deeply in love with girls he’s never spoken to; he buries his frustrations in the sci-fi novels he writes. Beyond that, though, Brief Wondrous Life provides a concise – and devastating – history of the Dominican Republic, and it’s not long before we realize that even Oscar, a second-generation American, cannot escape the distinctly Dominican curse that’s long plagued his family.

Diaz, who is also a ubiquitously anthologized short story writer, will be in town on October 29 to give a lecture titled We Are the New Americans at the U of M. The Rake caught up with him via email to discuss his book a little bit.



The Rake: So much of The Brief Wondrous Life seems to be about mythology. From the Dominican Republic you’ve brought the fukú, which is a sort of ancient curse. And then on the American side of things, you’ve got these modern myths that stem from things like The Watchmen, Lord of the Rings, and Akira (okay, so only one of those is actually American…). I’m curious about whether you think myths are still being created in the present, and I guess what their general role is in society?

Diaz: Myths are like curses: powerful narratives that give shape to our lives, our expectations and our futures. The 80's was a rich time for myth creation because those were dark times indeed. We're going through another dark time, but the only kind of myths we seem to be creating are silences and stupefying mendacities. It's as if consumer capital and three decades of idiotication have torn our tongues out from the roots.

The Rake: It’s interesting, too, that the fukú affects Oscar no matter what, whereas he brings his other influences – comic books and animé – upon himself. Is there something fundamentally different between ancient folklore like the fukú and more modern incarnations of mythology?

Diaz: Ancient myths have deep structures that have been time tested. We'll know if Lord of the Rings has those kind of legs in about eight hundred years.

The Rake: Do you think all history, if it’s to be remembered at all, has to be turned into myth – into something larger-than-life? It seems like that might be what you’re trying to do with Trujillo, painting him with a sort of Rasputin-like mystique…

Diaz: History is about nuance and about doubt and about attempting to make the disappeared-past human. It's about maintaining the role of the individual and the role of the collective without one erasing the other. History is a story, though, and it must compete with our desire to make it less, to make it more.

The Rake: Was the voice for this book conceived from the outset? Was it hard to sustain? I imagine you had to drink like three pots of coffee before writing each paragraph.

Diaz: Yes, from the start. And that's why it took seven years straight to write.

The Rake: In terms of literature, it seems kind of inevitable that we’re about to get an influx of Latin-American lit. Not to say they’re by any means exhausted, but in the last sixty years there have been large bodies of Jewish-American lit, and then African-American lit…Do you think developing a literary body is a way for a group to mark its foothold in this country?

Diaz: Having all those great books and writers hasn't done much for the material condition of the large part of African Americans in the U.S. These are tricky issues. I’m glad we're getting our books out there, but I’d rather have economic and social justice. Hate to say it, but it's true.

The Rake: Immigration is in some ways about assimilation, and what’s great about the voice in Oscar is that it’s this integration of Spanish and English…what was your intended role for language in this book?

Diaz: Only in the mind of the non-immigrant is immigration synonymous with assimilation. For most immigrants it's about pain and sacrifice and living lives simultaneously. When you have people like me returning to Santo Domingo six times a year that outdated idea about assimilation must give away to the idea that we are all living simultaneous lives: American and Dominican (in my case) at the same time.

The Rake: Meanwhile, Oscar seems to be shunned by both cultures. His Dominican-ness is constantly questioned, if only because he can’t get any ass, and his interests aren’t exactly mainstream American, either. What went behind your decision to make him such an outsider?

Diaz: I think all of us in our teenage years feel like outsiders. And no one feels more an outsider than an intellectual bookish sci-fi nerd of color in an urban community. Oscar just seemed like a wonderful way to explore all sorts of issues: the new identities of immigrant children, masculinity, how a community embraces and excludes, how affinity can be maintained even in the face of indifference and opposition and best of all how seriously genre depends on the unacknowledged poaching of the deep narratives of our post colonial world. Oscar was an opportunity to explore all of that, in one fleshy gloomy hopeful package.

The Rake: Was Akira the one where there was a dream sequence with giant teddy bears that bled milk? One of my friend’s older brothers was totally into that movie growing up, but I’m trying to remember which one it was. Ninja Scroll was also pretty huge. We watched it without subtitles and gave the characters names like Rice-Dumpling-Eating-Guy.

Diaz: Yes, teddy bears and milk. The greatest anime ever. Saw it the first time in Japanese, too. No subtitles. Nothing. Extraordinary. That's how I lived my first years in the US.