Mark Gilroy

Bringing Books to Life!

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

A number of friends and family members recommend books for me to read. With a few of them I take particular note: this is a good indication that I’m not going to like the book. But one person in my life who recommends a book two to three times a year – and almost always one I am initially suspect of because it is not something I would not pick out myself – is my son Merrick.

If not for Merrick’s recommendations, I never would have read Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game), Haruki Murakami (Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World) or Yann Martell (Life of Pi – though I probably would have got to that one eventually) – to name just a few. Oh … and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Honestly, I really wasn’t interested in a novel that deals with the political history of the Dominican Republic under the brutal Trujillo regime – I can watch the news if I want to be depressed was my first thought – but Merrick recommended it – and Diaz’s first novel did garner a few little awards like the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critic’s Circle Award. But on the issue of awards, that’s not necessarily a dealmaker for me; after all, there’s more than a few Oscar-winning movies none of us liked. So it came back to Merrick’s recommendation. I ordered it, promptly put it on the stack of books by my bed – where it dropped as low as the bottom third (usually the sure sign it’s never going to be opened) – and read other stuff for six months before finally picking Oscar up. Reluctantly.

Did I mention this book deals with the political history of the Dominican Republic under the the brutal Trujillo regime – AND includes footnotes with historical context and explanations throughout the novel?

Are you feeling as unenthused about Oscar as I was yet? I can go on!

But what a pleasure The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was to read. The jumbled but poetic wordsmything (along with those interesting and slightly disconcerting but somehow fitting footnotes) allow Diaz, the author, to output an interesting blend of stream of conscious thought and carefully constructed and intellectual analysis of the world through the eyes of his characters and his out-of-story interjections. I think that makes him a self-aware author. (I guess pulling that off is part of the reason he is a professor at MIT. I’m pretty sure he’s a very smart guy.)

The novel is a subtle and nuanced winding road with an occasional roadblock that delivers a direct, to-the-point, academic, sledge hammer observation on life.

Our hero, Oscar, is born in poverty in the DR – though his grandfather, a wealthy and famous physician in that nation, committed the unforgivable crime against the state. He tried to hide his beautiful daughter from the lecherous Trujillo. The beautiful daughter, Oscar’s mother, moves to a rundown, hardscrabble community in New Jersey that is bordered by a dump on one side and a six lane highway on another.

There is a fleeting period of Oscar’s life when he is the most handsome boy in his neighborhood and school and his mom and great aunt are convinced he is destined to become an international pop star – perhaps as big as Porfirio Rubirosa. But that is a short lived fantasy on their part as Oscar becomes a fat little boy who is the object of ridicule and relentless teasing from classmates. It doesn’t help that Oscar’s mother is distant and harsh to the point of cruelty – she would probably be reported to health and human services today – with he and his sister. (There’s a reason this savage beauty is the way she is that can only be explained by the ravages of the curse described in the next paragraph of this review.) But Oscar is a survivor and escapes into a world of sci-fi and fantasy – he is a bonafide literature and gaming nerd – that allows him to be and dream anything but what he is. Speaking of dreams, Oscar has only two compelling visions in life:  first is to become the Domincan version of J.R.R. Tolkien; and second is to find true love, something he feels he glimpsed in the golden age of his pre-adolescent youth when he seemed to be on his way to becoming the next Pofirio Rubirosa. Oscar writes novels by nightstand light and falls madly in love on a constant basis – always and inevitably to experience the anguish of heartbreak. Sometimes before the object of his affection even knew he was in love with her.

I should have started where the book starts and mentioned that The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is primarily about an evil spirit – the Dominican word is fuku – that has cursed Oscar’s family from the moment Trujillo (master of or mastered by evil spirits?) heard rumors of the beautiful daughter of Oscar’s grandfather. The evil spirit has destroyed or stolen anything good the family has had  – from lands and wealth to beauty and health. (Oscar believes the original fuku landed at San Juan with Christopher Columbus: the Ground Zero of the curse.) So Oscar’s family’s story is that of a precipitous fall from grace to one of dysfunctional but heroic struggle against the weight of a brutal personal history.

The ultimate question I got from the book is this: if you are cursed is there any point in fighting it? Isn’t that what a curse is – something you can’t fight? Or is there something one can do? How does a lost, downtrodden, forgotten, broken family – and a not-so-little boy who suffers from depression and inertia – stand up to all that an evil spirit – one that is still alive in human form through Trujillo’s heirs – and all that it can send at them?

On a visit to see family in the DR it is the frightened, cowardly, non-threatening and non-physically-imposing, ostracized, outcast, loner Oscar that dons the armor of a knight from one of his fantasy novels and chooses to face and slay the fuku beast on behalf of his family once and for all – and win the heart of his one and only true love while doing it.

Does his story end in the most improbably of victories – like Frodo Baggins in Oscar’s author-hero’s Lord of the Rings trilogy – or does his family’s fuku prevail and claim yet another victim? If you’re in the mood to read a book that deals with the political history of the Dominican Republic during the brutal Trujillo reign, you will discover the answer!

Sad. Humorous. Fanciful. Brutal. Optimistic. Fatalistic. Jumbled. Linear. Circular. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has it all.

We’ll Be Friends Forever – RIP Ora Knies

Amy with her 109-year-old grandmother.

My wife Amy’s grandmother, Ora Zimmerman Knies, died in her sleep on June 11, 2010. She was 109 years old.

Three days later we gathered at Memaw’s funeral mass held at St. Stephen Catholic Church in Hermitage, Tennessee. She was survived by her three “boys,” 11 grandchildren, 22 great grandchildren, and 19 great great grandchildren. She just missed holding a fifth generation of babies, with one of the great great’s due to have a child in a few weeks when she passed away.

Beyond savoring the memories and bonds of love and family, anyone who attended her funeral couldn’t help but reflect on all that Memaw had seen in her 109 active and colorful years of life. She was born January 13, 1901 – the year the first radio receiver picked up a transmission. Had she entered the world just two weeks earlier she would have been alive during three of the centuries of the Christian Era calendar.

Ora was born in the Territory of Oklahoma – it would not be admitted to statehood for another six years – and traveled cross country by horse-drawn carriage as a young girl when her family moved to Winchester, Tennessee.

The array of inventions and developments she witnessed in her lifetime is mind boggling – from the Wright Brothers engine powered airplane to commercial air travel and rockets and man landing on the moon; from the newspaper to the radio and on to the television, which itself morphed from black and white to technicolor with hundreds of stations; from the first Model-T rolling off the assembly line in Detroit in 1908 to the interstate highway system of the Eisenhower era; from penicillin and bubble gum in 1928 to the atomic bomb during World War II.

She witnessed the two world wars with Germany – the first by radio only and the second by radio and television. The day after her death, Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee landed in Germany to meet with Volkswaagen officials to discuss manufacturing opportunities in his state.

The United States of America has had 44 presidents in its history. Memaw lived during the presidency of 20 of them, from McKinley to Obama, and including her favorite, JFK.

Ora lived alone in her own house until 103, when she entered an assisted living facility. Her flower and vegetable gardens are still legendary. She drove her car for the last time on her 100th birthday. She did not hand the keys to her sons readily or happily and it took her a few years to forgive them – even though, according to the daughters-in-law, Memaw was pretty certain her boys had never really done anything wrong in life. She finally had to quit bowling in the Madison Bowling League when she was past the age of 100 due to hip problems.

Memaw’s last visit to our home was Christmas 2008 and she had a marvelous time, particularly looking through family photo albums. Amy had made memory books for Bo and Zach on their football seasons and after studying them several times, Ora proclaimed she was now a football fan. In fact, she wished she had learned to play.

Her one complaint about her assisted living residence was the food. She loved to have a home cooked meal and she participated in the preparation for Christmas Dinner by making her much requested peanut butter fudge. She sat by me at dinner and told me numerous times that we would be friends forever.

We all know that how we live our lives is what matters most. But most of us still have a fondness for the ongoing numbering of our days as well. If longetivity didn’t matter we wouldn’t work so hard to live longer.

For Memaw, quality and quantity were inseparable. She was one of those believers who received in abundance both of the blessings expressed in Psalm 91:16: “I will reward them with a long life and give them my salvation” (NLT).

So Ora Zimmerman Knies, may I be so blessed, and yes, let’s be friends forever.

John Wooden – RIP

On June 4, 2010, John Wooden died a the age of 99 in Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. He was named by his peers as the greatest team sport coach in American sporting history. Humble, selfless, caring, he won 10 NCAA national championships – something he never talked about – as coach at UCLA.

He was a three-time All American at Purdue and won a national championship there as a player. He then coached high school and taught English for 11 years before entering the college ranks. During his tenure at UCLA, which began in 1948, he had four perfect seasons, had an 88-game winning streak, won 7 straight national championships, won 38 straight games in the NCAA tournament, was elected into the College Basketball Hall of Fame as both a coach and a player, and many other accomplishments.

But Wooden, a small-town country boy from Indiana never wavered in his values on the road to the bright lights of Tinseltown.

As a teacher, he began every basketball season by showing his players how to put their socks on the right way. He never talked to them about winning or losing; just living their lives with character. He designed a pyramid of success that he felt would make players victors not only on the court but in all of life. It included values like industriousness, loyalty, enthusiasm, initiative, alertness, poise, honesty, confidence, and other traits that were as much about being a good person as a good basketball player. As a coach, he didn’t bully, he didn’t cuss, he didn’t run the most sophisticated systems. “He was really more like a parent than a coach,” said Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The theme he spoke of most is love and the great love his life was Nellie, his wife of 53 years. She was his first love and the only girl he ever kissed. After her death, he would sit down on the 21st of each month and write her a love letter that he would then leave on her pillow. Sports columnist Rick Reilly often asked him if he could use the letters as the basis of a book they could write together on making love last. Even decades after her death Wooden, with tears running down his cheeks, would say it was too recent and he needed more time

The Wizard of Westwood was an icon for coaches who are themselves icons. His players speak of him reverentially. Bill Walton said that some of Coach Wooden’s quotes and sayings – Woodenisms – that he snickered at as a player are the words he has on his walls and has taught his own children.

Just a sample of Woodenisms that will endure beyond his death are:

Ability is a poor man’s wealth.

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.

 Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. Courage is what counts.

If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?

If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.

It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.

 It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters.

Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.

John Wooden. RIP.