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Oct. 16th, 2008 11:17 amI expected to like Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao a whole lot - I mean, aside from the fact that I'd consistently heard great things about the book, I also knew that one of its most original selling points was the way that it blended contemporary nerdery with the tragedy of a Dominican family, which sounded like both a fascinating combination and one specifically designed to appeal to geeks like me.
But even though the prose was gorgeous and the story was interesting and the voices were well-drown, and objectively I thought it was a good book . . . I don't think I actually liked it. I just could not get past the fact that Oscar's tragedy was presented largely in terms of the fact that he is a Geek Who Could Not Get Laid. If Only A Girl Had Liked Him, the book implies, Things Might Have Been Different. And it's not that the book condemns girls for not wanting to date Oscar exactly, but there are definite hints of the Nice Guy philosophy in there. All the girls he falls in love with have terrible abusive boyfriends, Oscar gets banished to the Dreaded Friend Zone Oh Horrors, he pines and stalks and goes into depressive fits over every girl he meets and you know what? I am sick of this story. I am sick of male-female friendship being treated as - not even a second-best prize, as worse than that, as some kind of punishment for the guy, because everyone knows that the Nice Guy just wants to get into the pants of his female friends and that is how it ought to be and if she won't let him then he's just torturing himself by spending time with them. I am very, very tired of this.
I don't mean to say that there aren't strong female characters in the book, because there are. There are whole portions of the story that have nothing to do with Oscar and follow the women of his family, and I liked those a lot better. And I don't even mean to say that Oscar's attitude about girls is presented as completely correct or sympathetic, because it's not that, either, but . . . without spoiling anything, I will say that I don't think I'm wrong to say that Oscar's Quest to Get Laid (By Nice-Guying And Stalking) is presented in a kind of heroic-tragic light, and for me, that turned me off the book. Yonic qualities of the One Ring aside, pursuing your lady-love in spite of obstacles that include her stated request that you leave her alone does not make you a plucky little Frodo Baggins.
. . . that turned into more of a rant that I expected. Um, I didn't actually hate the book! Stylistically and in a lot of ways it was very good. But I didn't enjoy reading it, and I think that was why.
But even though the prose was gorgeous and the story was interesting and the voices were well-drown, and objectively I thought it was a good book . . . I don't think I actually liked it. I just could not get past the fact that Oscar's tragedy was presented largely in terms of the fact that he is a Geek Who Could Not Get Laid. If Only A Girl Had Liked Him, the book implies, Things Might Have Been Different. And it's not that the book condemns girls for not wanting to date Oscar exactly, but there are definite hints of the Nice Guy philosophy in there. All the girls he falls in love with have terrible abusive boyfriends, Oscar gets banished to the Dreaded Friend Zone Oh Horrors, he pines and stalks and goes into depressive fits over every girl he meets and you know what? I am sick of this story. I am sick of male-female friendship being treated as - not even a second-best prize, as worse than that, as some kind of punishment for the guy, because everyone knows that the Nice Guy just wants to get into the pants of his female friends and that is how it ought to be and if she won't let him then he's just torturing himself by spending time with them. I am very, very tired of this.
I don't mean to say that there aren't strong female characters in the book, because there are. There are whole portions of the story that have nothing to do with Oscar and follow the women of his family, and I liked those a lot better. And I don't even mean to say that Oscar's attitude about girls is presented as completely correct or sympathetic, because it's not that, either, but . . . without spoiling anything, I will say that I don't think I'm wrong to say that Oscar's Quest to Get Laid (By Nice-Guying And Stalking) is presented in a kind of heroic-tragic light, and for me, that turned me off the book. Yonic qualities of the One Ring aside, pursuing your lady-love in spite of obstacles that include her stated request that you leave her alone does not make you a plucky little Frodo Baggins.
. . . that turned into more of a rant that I expected. Um, I didn't actually hate the book! Stylistically and in a lot of ways it was very good. But I didn't enjoy reading it, and I think that was why.
