Brief Wonderful Life (Junot Díaz ) was our read for July-August 2009, and, other than anticipating the demise of Oscar from the title, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this book.
At first I was discouraged—no, really more like dismayed--by the raw language in the first few pages of the novel. Not out of prudishness, I hope, but because I have come to really appreciate elegant language, the kind of language I wish I could write. Somehow, coarse words (in unfailing supply) seem at odds with that. As it turns out, elegant and raw can, indeed, co-exist and even, maybe, help a reader better appreciate both.
The book became difficult for me to put down, though not so much because of plot and characters (I found many of the characters unsympathetic), but because I started looking forward to seeing how Díaz would use language—specifically rhythm and the use of symbolism related to language—as the story developed.
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At one level, the entire book is the narrator/author’s zafa (I think of it as a talisman) against fukú (my rough translation is “Very Bad Things”). Note the rhythmic repetition of fuá as we are introduced to Very Bad Things:
If you even thought a bad thing about Trujillo, fuá, a hurricane would sweep your family out to sea, fuá, a boulder would fall out of the sky and squash you, fuá, the shrimp you ate today was the shrimp that would kill you tomorrow.
(p. 3)
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For me, one of the book’s most intriguing characters was Oscar’s grandfather, Abelard, from whom Oscar seems to have inherited much. We learn, for example, that Abelard:
…possessed one of the most remarkable minds in the country: indefagitably curious, alarmingly prodigious, and especially suited for linguistic and computational complexity. (p. 213)
Yet, remarkably:
…none of Abelard’s books, not the four he authored or the hundreds he owned survived. Not in an archive, not in a private collection. Not a one. All of them either lost or destroyed. Every paper he had in the house was confiscated and reportedly burned. You want creepy? Not one single example of his handwriting remains. (p. 243)
Little wonder Oscar’s closest friend, the opening voice of Brief Wonderful Life, and the individual who narrates much of the story, tells us (after Oscar’s death) of:
… the four refrigerators where I store … (Oscar’s) books, his games, his manuscript, his comic books, his papers—refrigerators are the best proof against fire, against earthquakes, against anything. (p. 332)
That Abelard could have had such a friend! But such it is with Very Bad Things: fukú always eats first, and it always eats alone (p. 4). Abelard’s thoughts—Abelard—what Oscar might have learned from him—have all been irretrievably lost. Fukú, indeed.
Brief Wondrous Life may be, for me, most memorable for its use of, and commentary, on, the power of language. Not the least of which is the 800-word opening sentence to the chapter “Oscar Goes Native.” The chapter is reproduced below. I’ve tried breaking this up, counting syllables, counting words, trying to figure out what makes this chapter “tick.” Mostly this exercise has been futile, but maybe you’ll have better luck. I especially like the repetition of “after,” the parenthetical asides, and the strong and surprising finishes as Oscar goes native:
After his initial homecoming week, after he’d been taken to a bunch of sights by his cousins, after he’d gotten somewhat used to the scorching weather and the surprise of waking up to the roosters and being called Huáscar by everybody (that was his Dominican name, something else he’d forgotten), after he refused to succumb to that whisper that all long-term immigrants carry inside themselves, the whisper that says You do not belong, after he’d gone to about fifty clubs and because he couldn’t dance salsa, merengue, or bachata had sat and drunk Presidentes while Lola and his cousins burned holes in the floor, after he’d explained to people a hundred times that he’d been separated from his sister at birth, after he spent a couple of quiet mornings on his own, writing, after he’d given out all his taxi money to beggars and had to call his cousin Pedro Pablo to pick him up, after he’d watched shirtless shoeless seven-year-olds fighting each other for the scraps he’d left on his plat at an outdoor café, after his mother took them all to dinner at the Zona Colonial and the waiters kept looking at their party askance (Watch out, Mom, Lola, said, they probably think you’re Haitian—La única haitiana aquí eres tú, mi amor, she retorted), after a skeletal vieja grabbed both his hands and begged him for a penny, after his sister had said, You think that’s bad, you should see the bateys, after he’d spent a day in Baní (the campo where La Inca had been raised) and he’d taken a dump in a latrine and wiped his ass with a corn cob—now that’s entertainment, he wrote in his journal—after he’d gotten somewhat used to the surreal whirligig that was life in La Capital—the guaguas, the cops, the mind-boggling poverty, the Dunkin’ Donuts, the beggars, the Haitians selling roasted peanuts at the intersections, the mind-boggling poverty, the asshole tourists hogging up all the beaches, the Xica da Silva novellas where homegirl got naked every five seconds that Lola and his female cousins were cracked on, the afternoon walks on the Conde, the mind-boggling poverty, the snarl of streets and rusting zinc shacks that were the barrios populares, the masses of niggers he waded through every day who ran him over if he stood still, the skinny watchmen standing in front of stores with their brokendown shotguns, the poverty, being piledrived into the corner of a concho by the combined weight of four other customers, the music, the new tunnels driving down into the bauxite earth, the signs that banned donkey carts from the same tunnels—after he’d gone to Boca Chica and Villa Mella and eaten so much chicharrones he had to throw up on the side of the road—now that, his tío Rudolfo said, is entertainment—after his tío Carlos Moya berated him for having stayed away so long, after his abuela berated for having stayed away so long, after his cousins berated him for having stayed away so long, after he saw again the unforgettable beauty of the Cibao, after he heard the stories about his mother, after he stopped marveling at the amount of political propaganda plastered up on every spare wall—ladrones, his mother announced, one and all—after the touched-in-the-head tío who’d been tortured during Balaguer’s reign came over and got into a heated political argument with Carlos Moya (after which they both got drunk), after he’d caught his first sunburn at Boca Chica, after he’d swum in the Caribbean, after tío Rudolfo had gotten him blasted on mamajuana de marisco, after he’d seen his first Haitians kicked off a guagua because niggers claimed they “smelled,” after he’d nearly gone nuts over all the bellezas he saw, after he helped his mother install two new air conditioners and crushed his finger so bad he had dark blood under the nail, after all the gifts they’d brought had been properly distributed, after Lola introduced him to the boyfriend she’d dated as a teenager, now a capitaleño as well, after he’d seen the pictures of Lola in her private-school uniform, a tall muchacha with heartbreak eyes, after he’d brought flowers to his abulela’s number-one servant’s grave who had taken care of him when he was little, after he had diarrhea so bad his mouth watered before each detonation, after he’d visited all the rinky-dink museums in the capital with his sister, after he stopped being dismayed that everybody called him gordo (and, worse, gringo), after he’d been overcharged for almost everything he wanted to buy, after La Inca prayed over him nearly every morning, after he caught a cold because his abuela set the air conditioner in his room so high, he decided suddenly to stay on the Island for the rest of the summer with his mother and his tío. Not to go home with Lola. It was a decision that came to him one night on the Malecón, while staring out over the ocean. What do I have waiting for me in Paterson? He wanted to know. He wasn’t teaching that summer and he had all his notebooks with him. Sounds like a good idea to me, his sister said. You need some time in the patria. Maybe you’ll even find yourself a nice campesina. It felt like the right thing to do. Help clear his head and his heart of the gloom that had filled him these months. His mother was less hot on the idea but La Inca waved her into silence. Hijo, you can stay here all your life. (Though he found it strange that she made him put on a crucifix immediately thereafter.)
So, after Lola flew back to the Sates (Take good care of yourself, Mister) and the terror and joy of his return had subsided, after he settled down in Abuela’s house, the house that Diaspora had built, and tried to figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his summer now that Lola was gone, after his fantasy of an Island girlfriend seemed like a distant joke—Who the fuck had he been kidding? He couldn’t dance, he didn’t have loot, he didn’t dress, he wasn’t confident, he wasn’t handsome, he wasn’t from Europe, he wasn’t fucking no Island girls—after he spent one week writing and (ironically enough) turned down his male cousins’ offer to take him to a whorehouse like fifty times, Oscar fell in love with a semiretired puta.
Her name was Ybón Pimentel. Oscar considered her the start of his real life.
Which of course was brief and wondrous.
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Our book group discussion went in other directions, but because I wasn’t anticipating writing our review, you’re kind of stuck with my reflections.
I should note two other things: the book cover design won national recognition in 2007 and has been on display with other award winners from that year outside the Book Arts Studio at Marriott Library for the past couple of months.
And last week, I was traveling by train en route to Manhattan and passed through New Brunswick, home of Rutgers University. How could I not think of Oscar as we passed the Johnson & Johnson research campus, our train crossing the beautiful, long, train bridge that passes through it? Practically next door to the Rutgers campus. Where Oscar …
So, how could I not think of Oscar, indeed? I suspect, very much to my surprise, he will live on for quite some time, and in unexpected ways, in my thoughts.
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