Genres in Oscar Wao

Genres in Oscar Wao

One Last Diaz Thought....

“Well, I mean listen… I think it’s no accident that we’re celebrating genre writing by literary writers and not genre writing by genre writers. I think that one of the elements, one of the dimensions that is left out of this discussion endlessly, and to my great frustration, is the word privilege. No one would be reading these books at the level they’re reading them now, if they didn’t have the credentials, the imprimatur, of literary fiction. Which is to say if a genre-writing-Joe had produced both of those books they would be stuck in their genre moment. And I think that this is what’s incredibly important about this discussion … is that there is privilege, and that this privilege grants a serious reading to literary writers writing genre versus genre writers writing genre. I don’t think we’re giving them a serious reading, I don’t think they’re going to be reviewed in the New York Times, and there is a deep unfairness there. Somebody like Justin and somebody like Colson, they have an American passport and they can come back and forth from the third world of genre writing and no one asks them any questions, but the genre writers are stuck with a Dominican passport, and they can never get out.”

(Fitlgate, Michelle. “Junot Díaz on the imperfect perfection of the novel and why genre fiction gets so little respect.” Politio Beta 12 September 2012. Online.

T.S. Miller

"Preternatural Narration and the Lens of Genre Fiction in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao."

• What are the common assumptions about genre fiction in Oscar Wao? Who holds them and how does the text work with or against them?

All we get are hints, the most intriguing of which take the form of offhand

references to primary accounts that may have passed Yunior’s way: journals he

admits to snooping in, letters he may have read, possibly even audio recordings

(160) and photographs (275) he could have somehow acquired—both aural and

ocular proof, as it were. In spite of the abundance of such documents, Yunior

rarely offers actual intradiegetic excerpts from them. For instance, Yunior traces

only a few snatches of Oscar’s own words to letters: “It’s like I swallowed a

piece of heaven, he wrote to his sister in a letter” (47); “I’m the permanent

bachelor, he wrote in a letter to his sister, who had abandoned Japan to come to

New York to be with me” (267); “It’s hard to explain, he wrote his sister later”

(317). We see that, yes, Yunior could have accessed these letters via Lola, but we

must then ask if a handful of epistles to a sibling could furnish the intricate detail

with which Yunior tells Oscar’s story. In fact, Yunior often expresses the most

doubt about his narrative when the event he is describing originates in an

identifiable source and not his casual omniscience: “[Oscar] wrote almost three

hundred pages if his letters are to be believed” (320). Thus, Yunior makes no

effort to locate his knowledge strictly in documentary sources, raising the

question of why he even includes them in his text at all, if his narration quite selfconsciously

does not require them for inspiration or validation. (98)

So What?

This pattern changes

[PRACTICE? ANALYSIS? OUR UNDERSTANDING? CAUSATION (SOME REVERSAL OF THE INITIAL BELIEF OF RELATION OF TWO THINGS)? ORDER (CHANGE IN THE INITIAL UNDERSTANDING OF WHEN THINGS HAPPEN)?]

by

[HERE YOU EXPLAIN THE CHANGE].

yes BUT: Outcome of genre choice for Narrator

The presence of so many gaps in the narrative naturally leads back to the question of just how the homodiegetic Yunior acquires the wealth of insider information that he does possess. How on earth—by which I mean, how in any realistic narrative—does Oscar’s ex-roommate and Lola’s on-and-off boyfriend manage to access the most intimate details of their ancestors’ lives? Has Yunior

been duping us? Is Oscar Wao the pulpiest kind of sci-fi story after all, one in which Our Hero has been granted the power of omniscience by the mystical stone of Cognoskara? I would argue that Yunior’s narration, supernatural as it may sometimes seem, can be explained without recourse to the fantastic, even as his

self-identification with narrator figures from science fiction such as the Watcher remains one of the most important features of that narration. Indeed, we cannot dismiss the genre allusions as throwaway pop-culture references or as just another part of the architecture of postmodern pastiche, as many of them become

extended conceits with a nuance and significance that far transcend the level of the obvious dictator-Sauron analogy.I have already suggested how here the specific genre comparison that Yunior invokes ends up framing his opinions on the narrative act generally: the Watcher, “who lamps on the Blue Side of the Moon” (20 n.5), becomes the lonely observer on the margins, the very model of

the modern immigrant-nerd-artist. So too, however, does Yunior’s gap-ridden narration mirror his understanding of Genre as an attempt to order the world into one intelligible narrative. In other words, science fiction provides the metaphor for how Yunior narrates his story, but how he narrates his story remains ever incomplete, reflecting back upon his idea that no one genre, not even his and

Oscar’s beloved sf, can offer a complete or universal picture of the world. (97-8)

sci-fi: omniscient narrator, "fantastic" source of knowledge, lonely observer,

realist-post modern

incomplete/gaps in narrative

homodiegetic

What is Intertextuality?

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem09.html

• How does the contrast between the types of narrators work in the text? Does it convey meanings other than its literal definition?

• What caused the divide between an all-knowing narrator and one with gaps and lack of knowledge to happen as it did in Wao? What might have caused it to happen differently?

So What?

yes AND

Reasoning Narrative

This pattern changes

[PRACTICE? ANALYSIS? OUR UNDERSTANDING? CAUSATION (SOME REVERSAL OF THE INITIAL BELIEF OF RELATION OF TWO THINGS)? ORDER (CHANGE IN THE INITIAL UNDERSTANDING OF WHEN THINGS HAPPEN)?]

by

[HERE YOU EXPLAIN THE CHANGE].

genre is a desire to create one intelligible narrative

BUT no genre can create a "complete or universal picture"

• What conditions, influences or events caused the desire for genre to explain the world as a whole to be as it is in Wao? How or why did it become what it is?

Some of Wao's genres....

Diaz in Interviews

Bildungsroman

Realism

This is a very popular form of storytelling whereby the author bases the plot on the overall growth of the central character throughout the timeline of the story. As the story progresses, the subject undergoes noticeable mental, physical, social, emotional, moral, and often spiritual advancement and strengthening before the readers’ eyes. It has often been seen that the protagonist begins with views, aims and dreams that are in contrast to the other character’s in the story and then fights his or her way through to achieve them.

Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality" or "verisimilitude," realism is a literary technique practiced by many schools of writing. Although strictly speaking, realism is a technique, it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the representation of middle-class life. A reaction against romanticism, an interest in scientific method, the systematizing of the study of documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy all affected the rise of realism.

Magical Realism

https://literary-devices.com/content/bildungsroman/

Gerard Genette proposed the term 'transtextuality' as a more inclusive term than 'intertextuality' (Genette 1997). He listed five subtypes:

intertextuality: quotation, plagiarism, allusion;

paratextuality: the relation between a text and its 'paratext' - that which surrounds the main body of the text - such as titles, headings, prefaces, epigraphs, dedications, acknowledgements, footnotes, illustrations, dust jackets, etc.;

architextuality: designation of a text as part of a genre or genres (Genette refers to designation by the text itself, but this could also be applied to its framing by readers);

metatextuality: explicit or implicit critical commentary of one text on another text (metatextuality can be hard to distinguish from the following category);

hypotextuality (Genette's term was hypertextuality): the relation between a text and a preceding 'hypotext' - a text or genre on which it is based but which it transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends (including parody, spoof, sequel, translation).

To such a list, computer-based hypertextuality should be added: text which can take the reader directly to other texts (regardless of authorship or location). This kind of intertextuality disrupts the conventional 'linearity' of texts. Reading such texts is seldom a question of following standard sequences predetermined by their authors.

https://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/magical.htm

https://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/realism.htm

magical realism achieves its particular power by weaving together elements we tend to associate with European realism and elements we associate with the fabulous, and these two worlds undergo a "closeness or near merging." Magical realism can achieve its effects by either making marvelous a certain character's perceptions and/or by making the setting itself marvelous.

Characteristics of magical realism include five primary traits:

An "irreducible" magic which cannot be explained by typical notions of natural law.

A realist description that stresses normal, common, every-day phenomena, which is then revised or "refelt" by the marvelous. Extreme or amplified states of mind or setting are often used to accomplish this. (This distinguishes the genre from pure myth or fantasy.)

It causes the reader to be drawn between the two views of reality.

These two visions or realms nearly merge or intersect.

Time is both history and the timeless; space is often challenged; identity is broken down at times.

• https://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/magical.htm

Fantasy

Realistic Fiction

Sci-Fi

Comic Books

"Otaku" culture

Horror

"I can only map a partial genealogy of the various genres to

which the novel might belong, but Oscar Wao also owes some debt to the

highbrow New Yorker aesthetic, the immigrant novel, the family saga, the secret

history, the Latin American novela del dictador (dictator novel), the growing

body of Dominican American literature, and, as Díaz points out in an interview

with Callaloo, also “the African Diaspora tradition” (Céspedes and TorresSaillant 904)...also Magical realism" (T.S. Miller)

• What conditions, influences or events caused X to be as it is? How or why did it become what it is?

"To understand race relationships, you can read history all you want, but you’d be

better off in America reading some of the genre stories, looking at some of the

fantasy novels. I think these lenses are important ... without them, America will

elude you. Realistic fiction fails to describe the New World experience."

(Fitzsimons, Tom. “The Elusive Junot Díaz.” Lumiére Reader 13 June 2008. Online. 29

Apr. 2009. )

Moncia Hanna“Reassembling the Fragments”

Yes BUT:

Components US Pop Culture BUT Caribbean Literary

yes AND: causes of genre

• race relationships
• American experience
• New World Experience
• Inexplicability

individual

power vs lived experiences

Collective

official history vs experiences of a nation citizens

Díaz’s novel here creates connections between two apparently distinct sources—one from United States pop culture and one from contemporary Caribbean literary production. This alerts the reader to the fact that the story to follow will draw on quite different sources, creating a pastiche that attempts to capture the Caribbean diasporic experience. The two epigraphs also address the question of the relationship between the individual and the collective, with the Fantastic Four quote suggesting a natural antipathy between power and lived “ordinary” experiences while the Walcott poem suggests the intimate relationship between official history and the experiences of a nation’s citizens. (2)

(http://www.shmoop.com/oscar-wao/epigraph.html)

Yes AND:

Outcome

contrasting ordinary/experienced history and official/powerful history

• Who is the audience in Wao for official history? Who is the audience in Wao for experienced history? What is that audience’s expectations, and how are those expectations addressed in each type of history in the book?

• What is the effect in Wao of dividing history between official history of powerful and experienced history of the everyday? How does it achieve that effect? What details contribute to the overall effect? Might it have different effects on different audiences? What choices did the author/artist make in order to achieve that effect?