Thoughts on "Oscar Wao" and "Of Mice and Men"

It's been about a week or so since I've finished Oscar Wao and I failed to write my thoughts on it and since have started Of Mice and Men. I wish I owned these books instead of borrowing them from the library so I could write my thoughts in the books and annotate them instead of writing my thoughts afterwards on a computer.

I've taken to the habit of carrying books most places I go so that if I ever have a down moment I can bust out the book and do some reading. This usually means reading on a lunch break or reading when I'm waiting for someone. But that doesn't lend itself well to writing my thoughts down after I'm done reading. I could write my thoughts in my notebook as I'm reading, but that often leads me to be pulled out of the moment. I suppose the same complaint could made if I was writing in the margins of the book, but if I'm writing in the book at least I know exactly where my thoughts are relating to instead of just some jumbled scribbles in a notebook.

I usually try to read before I go to sleep too, which helps with getting my eyes away from a computer screen and preparing myself for sleep. If I could write in the margins of the book, I could annotate as I read before I sleep. If I go and write my thoughts on what I just read right before I go to sleep, it defeats the purpose of getting away from the computer before I sleep. I could write in my notebook, but I'd just run into the same problem as when I'm reading elsewhere.

A conundrum, but one that could be easily remedied by just being diligent with writing down my thoughts, say, after work, or some other time. Although, that leads into the issue of scheduling out my life and creating a routine. Putting myself on a schedule is something that I should do anyway, but I find it hard to for some reason. I treat my time as something that is nebulous and floating around, which, I think, according to many would be thought of as bad. Hopefully, if I get into the habit of writing, everything else will fall more easily into place though.

--------------------

Anyway, my thoughts on Oscar Wao. It was a great and fun read, to say the least. Humorous, tragic, and heartfelt, all often at the same time. I really dig the way he writes in a such a colloquial manner. His use of slang, nerdisms, and Spanish all mix to create a sort of levity in his writing that feels like it's a friend spinning a good tale (which is exactly what he's doing since he'll often be addressing the reader directly). It makes for a really relateable style since it's feels like he's just shooting the shit with you lots of time.

I've been wondering what the takeaway from the story is supposed to be though. Fuku - the curse that is equal parts cultural, societal, and religious superstition but also something that is very real and physical in the form of the dictator Trujillo. I like that there's the divide between those from the old country who believe in it completely and the kids of the new world with their doubt and skepticism towards it as just some silly superstition. That is until something awful happens and the characters doubt their so-sure attitudes about it just being some old world superstition. It captures the feeling of being a second generation American perfectly. That feeling of your identity being tied to two different places and cultures, not really knowing which one you belong to and not really belonging to either completely. Scoffing at the world of your parents and trying to fit into the world of here and now, but never being able to completely escape your blood. How do you deal with that?

I think that feeling of multiple identities is also felt in the opposing force to the Fuku, which is the constant reminding from Abuela to Beli about her glorious past of her father being a doctor and mom a nurse. There wasn't always a Fuku over the de Leon's and it's evidenced in both the family history and the chance encounters with sorts of magical spirits like the mongoose which saves them from horrible circumstances and even death. There's this pull and push between the higher powers between evil and good which seems to influence the direction of the characters lives.

But, ultimately, I think it comes down to the characters and their actions. Maybe this is just me projecting my own ideas of the world onto the novel, but even with all the seemingly magical and fantastical occurrences that seem to put the characters in peril and saves them (the man without a face who seems to appear whenever a character is close to dying and the mongoose that comes to guide and save their lives), to me, the characters actions are what puts them into peril and saves them. I think there is a sense that perhaps its these higher powers that be may steer the characters journeys (sometimes literally when it comes to the long hand of Trujillo), but the characters actions puts them exactly where they are. Oscar remains a virgin and pretty much a loser until the very end when he goes to the Dominican Republic to chase his love and that leads to his death, but it's not like that happens without warning. He is sometimes led on a path to change such as when Yunior tries to get him to exercise and teach him how to pick up girls, but, in the end, it's Oscar who gives up on himself of changing. All the characters fortunes, good and bad, all have root in their own actions despite the belief in or non-belief in the Fuku. Fuku and the other magical instances, to me, are rationalizations of the mind in trying to understand the events that happen to the characters.

This is best evidenced to me in the forms of the faceless man, the mongoose, and the references to a book with blank pages. Evil in the world is most often felt in a very physically violent way, most often at the hands of Trujillo's agents which manifests itself as the faceless man. When you live in a strict dictatorship where the most off the cuff remark can lead to you being left for dead in a cane field, anyone and everyone might be an agent of Trujillo.

The mongoose, on the other hand, is a magical animal that appears to guide our characters to safety like a magical spirit animal. I'm not really sure what mongooses are like in real life, so it's hard to parse out exactly what the animal's significance is. Maybe it's something like the notion that evil is often the product of people not taking a stand up to evil, i.e, being faceless (All that necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing and all that), but the mongoose doesn't possess any sort of notion of morality in the way that we understand it? All it does it tries to survive, live, and procreate. I'm sure I'm getting something wrong there, but, well, that's as far as I'm going to get.

Lastly, the blank pages in the book obviously represent an unwritten future. The future is unwritten and can be either good or bad. When we first encounter the blank pages (I think) is when it is talked about in relation to the history of the Dominican Republic and the pages of a history book are unwritten awaiting for the final judgment from Trujillo and at the end of the book when Yunior has a vision of Oscar handing him a book with blank pages and awaits her daughter to come to him so that she can learn her history and defeat the Fuku with her bright future.

The future is in our hands and is what we make of it.

----------------------------------------

Next time, Of Mice and Men.

----------------------------------------

I should write my ideas down for an expanded universe of the Stars My Destination also sometime