IdleRich
IdleRich
Anyone read this guy? To me he's just about interesting enough to merit his own thread instead of the passing mentions that are generated from the "what are you reading now?" thread. A few years ago I read his novel The Brief Wondrous LIfe Of Oscar Wao - a title there that is so stereotypically magic realist as to be a joke, in fact it probably is a joke, that's the sort of book it is. The novel itself is a mixture of stuff about the (Dominican) immigrant experience in the US mixed with Pynchonesque post-modernism and footnotes (my honest thought, I'm not just saying that cos these days he's the only author we're allowed to discuss on dissensus) mixing comic book references, sci-fi, ghetto sex and flitting between various characters in the US and in the Dominican Republican where the almost impossibly malevolent dictator Trujlllo casts a terrifying shadow over everything and everyone. The book was fun and free-wheeling and, ultimately, to my mind, disappointingly shallow (although fair enough I learned something cos I knew less than nothing about that dictatorship).
The other day I was at my friend's house and I spied This Is How You Lose Her on her shelf. Having left the book I was supposed to be reading at a friend's house I asked her if I could borrow that instead and before I took it we had a brief discussion of his style; to my surprise she was utterly bemused when I mentioned Pynchon and couldn't see the link at all. I took the book home and started reading it and I immediately understood why, it feels very much like the Wao book but is totally shorn of the footnotes and the magic realism (so far at least) and the flourishes that had caused me to make the comparison. Thing is, even so, it read virtually the same as the other book and that brought home to me how much all of that stuff was a gimmick. I messaged my friend to say that I thought that Diaz was a good writer but I just wish that he had something to say, and it occurred to me that he had added all those gimmicks on to what I'd assumed to be the later book to cover up for an ultimate lack of ideas. Then I googled and discovered that THIS was in fact the later book and his direction of travel was in fact to remove the flashy bits and cut down to the purer essence. But still, I just wish that the essence was more.... essential.
Anyway, he seems to be highly regarded by the critics and he can write rather well but, for me, he's missing the magic element. Anyone want to tell me why I'm wrong, or even why I'm right? Anyone read him at all please?
The other day I was at my friend's house and I spied This Is How You Lose Her on her shelf. Having left the book I was supposed to be reading at a friend's house I asked her if I could borrow that instead and before I took it we had a brief discussion of his style; to my surprise she was utterly bemused when I mentioned Pynchon and couldn't see the link at all. I took the book home and started reading it and I immediately understood why, it feels very much like the Wao book but is totally shorn of the footnotes and the magic realism (so far at least) and the flourishes that had caused me to make the comparison. Thing is, even so, it read virtually the same as the other book and that brought home to me how much all of that stuff was a gimmick. I messaged my friend to say that I thought that Diaz was a good writer but I just wish that he had something to say, and it occurred to me that he had added all those gimmicks on to what I'd assumed to be the later book to cover up for an ultimate lack of ideas. Then I googled and discovered that THIS was in fact the later book and his direction of travel was in fact to remove the flashy bits and cut down to the purer essence. But still, I just wish that the essence was more.... essential.
Anyway, he seems to be highly regarded by the critics and he can write rather well but, for me, he's missing the magic element. Anyone want to tell me why I'm wrong, or even why I'm right? Anyone read him at all please?
