I spent an inordinate amount of time as a young writer developing
voice. For essays I came up with a very personal one-on-one voice,
which utilized a lot of contractions, direct address, and even
footnotes to establish a rapport with my readers. Probably the best
compliment a teacher ever gave me was when one of my thesis advisers,
the one who didn't particularly like my thesis mind you, suggested I
send one of my pieces in to McSweeney's for publication. I mention
this because the introduction to Oscar Wao accomplishes all the
writerly-type things that I spent hours trying to figure out so long
ago.
I have been arguing with a mentor for the last two years on the merits
of both first-person and narrative. He is of the opinion that
first-person is a selfish, solipsistic style of writing that leads to
the egomaniacal tendencies of liberal-democratic heads-of-state (and
Dick Cheney). Furthermore he believes that narrative is a leftover
relic of the Victorian era that offers nothing substantive when it
comes to storytelling. I, of course, end up being the conservative in
our arguments when I say that first-person is as reasonable as
third-person or even stream-of-conscious because it is the only truly
legitimate encounter a person can have as they walk the earth -
face-to-face that is. And then I usually go on to argue that
narrative is an absolutely essential characteristic for all humans,
whether it be in storytelling, religion, or even the way in which
one's brain helps one to get through the day. It is how we create
order out of chaos and find beauty in what I believe are ultimately
empty existential realities (depressing I know). And I mention this
because the introduction to Oscar seems to strike a fairly nice
balance between first-person, where the narrator is present but is
telling a story about someone else which is then interspersed with the
first-person perspective of Oscar's sister, and narrative, in that we
get (through the first 75 pages of Oscar's life and his sister's) a
narrative that is not necessarily chronological or even trustworthy
but highly reminiscent of the fragmented way in which most people tend
to walk the earth and encounter others.
So, basically, I enjoyed the shit out of starting the book last night.
It was great. I immediately fell in love with the narrator and the
characters. I liked the hints about the political tones that will
eventually influence the story, but even more I liked Oscar. He has a
good heart, and the older I get the more I look to that one thing -
having a good heart - as the only criterion I use when I think about
the people around me. Some of the kids I knew in high school remind
me a lot of Oscar: they were lonely and thoughtful and many of them
read a lot of 'genre,' because it was a more rewarding relationship
than seemed possible with the ugly-hearted sons-of-bitches around
them. It was an escape from the ugliness that tends to be ubiquitous
if you haven't yet trained yourself to find beauty in the obscure
little spots that beauty tends to hide in. Hell, that was me half the
time too. So I feel a kinship with Oscar right from the start, and it
doesn't really matter that we are separated by race, language, family,
geography, etc, etc.
I wasn't expecting the jump from the narrator of the first chapter to
Oscar's sister in chapter two. It threw me off, and I sort of had to
work my way through the second chapter in a more blue-collar-like
effort than the ease with which I floated through the first 50 pages.
It wasn't that the second chapter was bad (except that the male writer
of the book doesn't seem to pull off female consciousness quite as
seamlessly as I would like), it was just out of the blue and
unexpected, and basically I'm wondering what the fuck happened to
Oscar? And is Junot Diaz just being a narrative cock-tease for
awhile? Because I can handle it, if that's the case, but if the rest
of the book is gonna jump around like this, then I need to prepare
myself.
So that's where I'm at as I head off to read a shorter chunk tonight.
All told I read like 150 pages of text yesterday, only half of which
was Oscar, so I'm a little burned tonight, and if I knew the chapter
one narrator was coming back I'd be ready for another 75 pages, but
I'm predicting some
crazy-backwards-chronological-
to miss anything
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