Thoughts on "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao"

This recommendation came on down from Jason Lam. He's been telling me about Junot Diaz for a while and now I'm having the pleasure of reading his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. This is coming off a reclaimed urge to read more. So far I've reread some of my sci-fi favorites like Stars My Destination and Snowcrash then The Defining Decade (a book about being in your 20s and to stop fucking around), East of Eden, and, the last one I finished, The Golden Compass.

I should write down some of my thoughts on those other books and still make something expanding the universe of Stars, but for now I'll reflect on Diaz:

Just shy of one hundred pages in and I'm digging it. Even though this first chunk I read is mostly set in the 1970s, I found it pretty relatable.  Maybe a little too relatable for comfort, to be honest. Oscar is a consummate nerd and loser: wrapped up in fantasy and scifi, enveloped in games, busy fantasizing and then excruciatingly friendzoning himself with the one girl that he hits it off with. I don't know if I'm so bad as he is, but I can still see shades of me in him. But by the end of the first chapter of the novel and before he even goes off to college, though, he's turned extremely inward and completed a novel and other writings! We, as the reader, don't know anything about his writing really, except that he wanted to be a fantasy games writer and that he calls it "mediocre," but how seriously can we take his own words when every other one is self-deprecating or self-pitying? The fact is even if he is a virgin nerd loser in that time, he still completed a novel, which is way more of an accomplishment than anything I've done so far. So even compared to Oscar, aren't I really the loser? In his deep ostracization because of his nerd-loserdom, he has a deep knowledge of niche and is able to isolate himself to achieve something. Nothing good came without struggle and I've always lived with the guiding principle that balance is the key to life, but perhaps not the key to greatness. Do I need to go off the deep end and stop in this middling mediocrity of nothingness?

As an aside to this, I definitely subscribe to the idea that nerdism is in full force today exactly because of people like Oscar. Shunned in his childhood from the privileges of popularity and everything that brings with it, he is able to work on a different set of skills and will come into power later in life. Maybe not in this book, but certainly others like him and one needs to look no further than the rising popularity in comic books, Lord of the Rings, the come back of Star Wars, and so on. Even just in the course of this book I think many a reference has flown over my head, but I caught onto some referring to Lord of the Rings and X-Men and so on. It makes for fun reading as you get an intersection of pop-culture references and Spanish lingo flying at you every other line.

It's funny reading this because I see so many parallels with my own life. Lola, Oscar's older sister, is more rebellious, more athletic, more popular, stronger, and so much more. It's hard not see my older brother in her, even if it's she and not a he.

The beginning part of Chapter 2 with Lola also hit hard with her discovering a lump in her mom's breast. It's hard not to think about my own mom and her battle with cancer, although the circumstances were very different. My brother and I were mostly past the stage of adolescent quarreling with our parents and was just more concerned with helping our mom get better. This does stick out to me though,

"This is how it all starts: with your mother calling you into the bathroom. You will remember what you were doing at that precise moment for the rest of your life: You were reading Watership Down and the rabbits and their does were making their dash for the boat and you didn't want to stop reading, the book has to go back to your brother tomorrow, but then she called you again, louder, her I'm-not-fucking-around voice, and you mumbled irritably, Si, senora.

That feeling of "this is how it all starts" and remembering what you were doing at that moment is very familiar. I actually don't think I remember when I got the news that mom had cancer, but I do remember things. Standing outside of Sproul Hall and receiving a call from my dad to talk to me may have been when I got that news. I remember watching Linda, Linda, Linda! with her as she was on the couch (a movie I fell in love with in one of my film classes). I remember waking up one morning to mom blowing on a whistle as she had fallen down on her way to the bathroom and was badly bruised. I remember feeling like a horrible son for sleeping in and not waking up to be there for her. I remember feeling helpless. I remember the nurse at the hospital scolding me for not having already put mom into hospice because of the condition she was in. I remember feeling angry at that nurse. I remember the nights after that fall when she had to be readmitted to the hospital and we would take turns staying with her overnight. I remember my mom looking longingly out at the window and saying that we should go walk down to the beach once she got out of her. I remember wanting for her to be better and to do that more than anything then. I remember suggesting getting a wheelchair for mom for a birthday gift so we could get her out of the house and I remember my brother getting angry at me for that suggestion. I remember that I was watching Breaking Bad and designing flyers when I discovered that she had stopped breathing and that was it. I remember being back home and for a flash thinking my cousin was my mom as she walked into the kitchen from the living room and then realizing that I would never see that sight again. I do remember those precise moments in my life.

I look forward to the rest of the book.

The Cat's Meow

It's always something you thought you forgot about. Tucked away in the junk drawer equivalent part of your brain. Something that you have a passing fancy for then toss away along with everything else that you think you might have some use later for. Sometimes you come across a word, a picture, a sound that reminds you of that random piece of information tucked away, but you don't do anything about it. You know it's there but what is there to do with it?

But you never really looked at it closely enough. The first passing fancy was just that, a passing. Sure you noticed something about it but you're never really sure what, just an ephemeral feeling that resonated. And now it's stuck in your memory always there, but never really conscious of why it's there, how it got there, or why you even hang onto it. But it stays with you whether you want it to or not.

She was always there. Sure she wasn't always available but she was always there. You visited her but you weren't visiting her, you were visiting someone else. You stayed up late with her and talked – not about her, but about someone else. You caught glimpses of her walking around the town, you bump into each other at a party, you share a drink, and that's it. You only ever catch shades of her. And for some reason those vague shades of her memories stick with you.

And in your daydreams your mind wanders to the junk drawer where memories that you thought you forgot come to blindside you. Like that one time where your mom was talking to some quack doctor about how eating cold food was bad for your body. What was up with that? And why do you remember that? And just as suddenly as one thought enters another takes over and it's her. What makes her come up? How is anything I was thinking about before related to her? Nonetheless, here she is.

The more you wonder why she's here now, the more it becomes impossible not to think about her. You imagine what kind of person she is, how she is. How would it be if you guys hung out more? How would it be if things got serious between you two? Maybe you two are out somewhere alone for whatever reason, you can't be funny on your own but she says the perfect thing for you to have a witty comeback for that makes her laugh and think you unbelievably clever. Your hand fits perfectly in the hold of hers. You two come close on the moonlit pier. Or maybe it's on a high hilltop under some stars that fly overhead. Maybe you're at a concert together or just watching a movie. Her lips parted just so. Soft. Moist. Waiting for yours to come together. 

A low buzz and a chirp to go along with it. It's your phone, as luck would have, coming to save you from yourself. And you're off to somewhere with the regulars. Maybe you'll bump into her wherever you're going though.