Review of Empire, by Orson Scott Card

Empire by Orson Scott Card

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I will keep my review “fairly” brief, after scanning a number of the positive and negative reviews. I have no problem with the main characters having a conservative point of view. I do have a problem with the execution of the writing. As I pursue my own masters in creative writing, I am stunned by how Card violates some of his own advice from his two good books on writing (Character and Viewpoint; How to write science fiction). Whether you call this science fiction, or an espionage/thriller, it still has to be believable within the confines of the world he is building. It doesn’t.



Card choses to build a world that is essentially “right now” and post 9-11. He populates it with people that actually exist (O’Reilly on FOX). If you do that, in broad brush strokes you are setting expectations that this is the world we live in right now and people would react as you have seen them recently react. They don’t.



Card does a number of things that make this hard to swallow: 1) Major attack in and on New York City, where the entire nation still empathizes with the police and fire department (left or right politically) and has the revolutionary forces kill all uniformed people and the city then rolls over and embraces that group? This world? Today? Really? Embrace the killers of anyone in uniform? Then he basically ignores the entire situation for several months (elapsed novel time) and focuses strictly on the remaining protagonists? Card, what happened to “world building” as you discuss in your craft books? Yes, you wanted to keep it fast paced, but that much time elapses and we get close to zero feel for what is happening in the nation. A few blurbs about city council votes does not cut it!



The premise at its core could have worked. I have had two similar ideas boiling in my head for years…but if I ever approach the idea, I will look to this book as a list of things to avoid, not to emulate.

My concern (for Card’s future) is that this book seems to have not been fully edited by a good set of critical editors. As authors become popular, this seems to occur frequently. Good and great authors still need to be told when something doesn’t work and they need to not let their past success go to their head. I recently read a collection of Card’s short stories, which included some LDS oriented stories. Despite the obvious political and religious leanings, those stories were quite good and the short essays that went with each story were insightful. But, most of those were written long ago.

Finally, as mentioned by a few, this also feels “video game-ish.” I will probably not spend the time on the sequel to this, “Hidden Empire,” as I suspect it will be in the same world and follow the same style. I don’t begrudge Card the opportunity to get preachy, I just would like him to do a better job at it. Sometimes, when an author is too passionate about something s/he loses objectivity and the ability to self-edit. I think this may be the case for this book (and its sequel).







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Review/response to Red Azalea

Red Azalea by Anchee Min

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This is part of my MFA reading responses. I really was a bit underwhelmed by this book.





Response to Red Azalea, by Anchee Min.

There are two aspects I would note in the way Min writes. The first, the simplistic—on the surface—language and sentences. The sentences are extremely short, almost staccato. This is especially true in the beginning, which mirrors the early age of the narrator at that time, but I believe it is not due to this, but rather that English is not Min’s first language. Nonetheless, the simple language does not mean that there are not complex thoughts or changes going on in the narrator. Nor, does it mean that we do not get some strong visuals that simultaneously tap into the Chinese culture, such as the description of her first encounter with the head of the “farm:”

She had a pair of fiery intense eyes, in which I saw the energy of a lion. She had weather-beaten skin, thick eyebrows, a boney nose, high cheekbones, a full mouth, in the shape of a water chestnut. She had the shoulders of an ancient warlord, extravagantly broad. She was barefoot. Her sleeves and trouser were rolled halfway up. Her hands rested on her waist. (52)



The simple language and short sentences does wear on the reader. It is not clear whether this is intentional or not. The subject matter itself is wearing, with one insult of Maoist communism after another hitting the reader. This combined with the short sentences wants to make the reader scream with frustration and rail against the situation.

The simple sentences often convey the childlike quality of the narrator, despite the fact that in many ways—as she states early on—she was never a child. I would have found it more effective if the sentences became more sophisticated later in the book, but they really do not.

The second noticeable writing technique, one that I hate, is the lack of dialogue punctuation. In Min’s writing it is not quite the same as, for instance, Cormac McCarthy’s. Her sentences are more of a past tense summary narrative, while his is more of a “my writing should make it obvious that this is a dialogue,” combined with his own admission that he likes to imitate a biblical style of writing. But, I digress.

Over all Min gets away with what could be difficult writing to read by the subject matter. Memoirs written about painful life experiences, from cancer, personal tragedy, to big events in first person—the holocaust, Vietnam, Soviet Russia, Maoist China, Rwandan genocide—we forgive strange writing by the power of the experience that is expressed. We forgive it only when it feels real. Personal. Ultimately, Min is effective this way. Her writing is personal. We admire that is not a translation and her words directly and they feel like her words. We don’t mind the slightly strange metaphors and similes, because they also seem like authentic cultural differences. For instance the wording and the simile, “Lu sensed my intimacy with Yan immediately, like a dog to a smell (101),” does not seem quite right in phrasing, or even the simile, but we accept it as her thinking and authentic.

Ultimately, I felt Min’s writing detracted from the book overall, but only slightly. It is a good reminder that powerful writing does not need to be sophisticated in an overt manner.



Works Cited

Min, Anchee. Red Azalea. New York: Berkley Books. 1995.







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Writer's response to Waiting for the Barbarians

Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a writer's response as part of my MFA.



Response to Waiting for the Barbarians, by J.M. Coetzee

On the heels of Riddley Walker I found some interesting parallels between Hoban’s writing and Coetzee’s writing. Both used the first person to make this more personal, more like someone telling the events directly. The tense is primarily present tense. The worlds, the milieu, are made up—that is they are not present day and not actual events and places—and finally the entire story and the characters are allegories, or metaphors, for the repeated flaws of mankind.

It is the latter which I will explore in Coetzee’s book. Coetzee carefully uses terms that we are familiar with, but at the same time do not add too much specificity to place, or country. It is sufficiently vague, yet leaves us thinking we understand immediately what is going on—through our own filling in of the blanks. This starts immediately, it is after all only 130 pages long. The phrase “emergency powers” on page one evokes every government in the world where the military becomes involved. It is timeless. By page 2 we have “Third Bureau,” “Civil Guard,” and by page three “Excellency” as a manner of address. Coetzee capitalizes these terms, telegraphing the reader their significance as an allegory. For example, “the War College (50).” They are symbolic of all military guards that have special powers, of all special divisions with special powers. Timeless. Any country.

This careful choice of words is impeccable throughout the book. Post reading of the book, I looked at a number of reviews by readers. The number of readers from around the world, who saw this as resembling their own country’s history, was amazing. This use of words that are just on the edge of telling us specifics, without actually doing so includes “frontier,” “capital,” “communal land,” etc.



Coetzee also gives us a slightly different narrator with his use of parenthesis in the first person. He could have used italics for thought, or simply narrative, yet his use of parenthesis is fairly extensive. For instance, “(On the other hand, who am I to assert my distance from him? I drink with him, I eat with him, I show him the sights, I afford him every assistance as his letter of commission requests, and more. The Empire does not require that its servants love each other, merely that they perform their duty.)” (5-6). Note the Empire as another capitalized word that is an allegory for all empires. But, the parenthesis are very interesting. They remove this thought more than an interior dialogue, or italicized thought. They give a distance, as if the narrator came back later to add this, or as if the narrator is saying these pieces of observation are the trusted narrator versus the less reliable in the present actor. Another example of this distance, or more reliable narrator, “(I say this who now keep a barbarian girl for my bed!)” (38). I don’t think I have seen parenthesis used quite like this before.

Every character is an allegory. Colonel Joll, the cook, the prostitute, but especially the young woman who the narrator takes special interest in. Coetzee keeps these characters nameless, even Colonel Joll is somehow still nameless. No first name and hidden behind sunglasses. The ‘barbarian’ girl, or young woman, is an important allegory and ties in with the recurring use of a dream that Coetzee uses. Normally, I dislike the reliance on dreams for metaphors, but as a recurring dream, where some small part changes—as the narrator changes—works. The dream gives us additional insight into what role the barbarian girl plays. “I circle around the child, who continues to pat the snow on the sides of the castle, till I can peer under the hood. The face I see is blank, featureless; it is the face of a n embryo or a tiny whale; it is not a face at all but another part of the human body that bulges under the skin; it is white; it is the snow itself. Between numb fingers I hold out a coin. (37)”

The story is what is under the surface. The barbarian woman will play the crucial role in the narrator’s change. The dream is an allegory of the barbarian woman, while simultaneously being a metaphor for the facelessness of the oppressed, of children, and a metaphor for what is just below the surface of any of us, especially the narrator. Coetzee’s skill is in dropping these allegories and metaphors all the time, yet we are not overwhelmed with them, nor are they tiresome, they still propel the story forward. By page 52-3 the dream girl is taking form, becoming real and it is the narrator who is becoming amorphous, slow, frozen,”I try to smile and touch them as I pass on my way to the girl, but my features are frozen … I raise a hand to tear it off: the hand I find is thickly gloved, the fingers are frozen inside the glove, when I touch the glove to my face I feel nothing.” The dream is shifting its metaphor to the powerlessness of the narrator, the slowness to act, that he is becoming the girl and she is becoming real. “But no, she is herself, herself as I have never seen her, a smiling child, the light sparkling on her teeth and glancing from her jet-black eyes. ‘So this is what it is to see!’ I say to myself. (53)” Recall that the barbarian woman is mostly blind, but some of her sight is returning and she is becoming more real.

I found the use of a woman’s period, which is almost cliché, as bad luck and superstition interesting (69-70). It may not have been intentional, but the narrator’s going through purification ceremonies to appease the others became an interesting metaphor for what the narrator will have to go through the rest of the book. His own purification, punishment, is necessary for him.

The book ends with the dream—despite the narrator claiming that it is “not the scene I dreamed of (156),” affirming its importance as an allegory for the entire story, which is itself an allegory for empires oppression and stupidity. The children are a bit of hope for the future. The snow wipes the slate clean. He realizes he had “lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may lead nowhere.” The Empire is no longer his road and guide, but life continues.

In summary, I found Hoban’s book hugely interesting and a fascinating study, but Coetzee’s book lent itself to more ideas as to how to add to my repertoire of writing techniques, through the use of allegory and first person that more closely resembles what I would use.



Works Cited



Coetzee, J.M. Waiting for the Barbarians. New York. Penguin Books. 1982. Print.









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MFA Writing Response to One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A response from a writer's perspective from my MFA program.



Response to One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.



Reading Marques and Morrison back to back, it is natural to examine the differences in their use of magical realism. Marquez is certainly more famous for his use of magical realism, yet I find Morrison’s more satisfying—causing me to ask why? What is it about Marquez that I am not quite fulfilled by?

First, I generally eliminated the potential that the translation was flawed. Supposedly Marquez has declared that Gregory Rabassa’s translation is superior to his original work (Product Description) and by all accounts Rabassa is a first class translator. Focusing strictly on the magically realism I am struck by two things that bother me the most and I would avoid as a writer.

The first is that I think that the “magic” in Marquez’s work is over the top. It is distracting. I acknowledge that in magical realism the world is such that all characters within simply believe and do not find anything fantastic about the magic, yet I find the sheer quantity of magic within the book boarders on chaos. With Morrison the big theme dominates the book, with the primary magic surrounding the ghost/spirit/incarnation of the dead Beloved. There were minor magic, with Baby and her sense of people and ability to preach, and some even less significant pieces, but it was not overwhelming. With Marquez it permeates every page so that at a certain point I can no longer read without laughing at the absurdity. One, of countless examples, would be:

As soon as Jose Arcadio closed the bedroom door the sound of a shot echoed from the door. A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendia house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amarant’s chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano Jose, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Ursula, was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread. (131-2)



Now there is much to enjoy in this, with the detail and the length, Marquez is employing other techniques, beyond magical realism, but the magnitude of the absurd in the magic is a bit much. I think the reason I find it a bit much is the additional, non-magical, portions that rub me the wrong way. Why 36 eggs for bread? I make bread, even with the enlarged family in the household at this time, it doesn’t make sense. Just as the passage near the beginning of the book, which so many critics love, on discovering ice. What bothered me there was we just went through how they had traveled through mountains to get to the location of the town. So the magic of discovering ice was less magical to me when they should have known ice through the mountains. Thus, even in a world of magical realism, there needs to be a modicum of logic. In mainstream fantasy, that is one of the primary rules.

One aspect of magical realism that both Morrison and Marquez utilize that I find works for both of them is the feeling that we are in the middle of a folktale.

Outside of magical realism, I found the sheer number of characters distracting, similar to some Russian novels. This is probably a cultural weakness on my part, where hundreds of names that sound very similar become distracting, but it is definitely something that I try and remain aware of in my own writing and see it in play here was a reminder. Where this causes further problems, despite being a characteristic of magical realism, is that not only is there no real point of view, but we—reader—never get really close to any of the characters. In Beloved, I felt a closeness to Sethe, Paul D, and Denver. With Marquez I felt very distant.

Time, for the most part, was more linear—which contrasts with Beloved. They both spatially centered on one location, while occasionally wandering. I like this technique of spatial center and the slightly more linear aspect to time in Marquez.

Overall, in considering the writing styles of both Marquez and Morrison, I look to Morrison more for inspiration. I hope that is not purely a cultural bias, as I like to think that as a child of an immigrant with two masters focused on international studies that I am beyond that, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility.



Works Cited

“Product Description: If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents.” Amazon.com. Amazon, Inc. Web. 19 September 2010.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2004. Print.

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Harper Perennial. 2006





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Writer's response to Idoru, by William Gibson

Idoru by William Gibson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The review is part of a combined respones I did for my current MFA program.



Response to Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat, Idoru by William Gibson, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Attempting a combined response with these three books does not make sense at first blush, but contrasts are often interesting and illuminating, so I will attempt it. My real hesitation is that Diaz’s writing from a craft perspective brings so much more to the table that it may overwhelm the observations of the other two. That too may be worth knowing and understanding. Why does one book, out of three strong books, strike me as more powerfully done than the others?

All three books do world building. Diaz is building the world of a Dominican immigrant family and Danticat is doing something very similar from a Haitian perspective. Same large island, two very different voices—although the perspectives of violence and history have similarities. Both are first person, giving the personal power to the book, but Diaz’s first person is the more interesting from technique. Diaz writes what I consider a Shakespearian tragedy. You know it is going to end badly, but there are three acts (despite breaking the book into more parts, they feel like three major acts) and they are so well done, that you enjoy the ride toward tragedy. You feel for the characters, but still have fun. This is because of the voice.

What hits you immediately is the constant reference to popular culture of a particular kind—fantasy, science fiction, comic book. This is the vernacular of the protagonist. Yet, what is more interesting is that the protagonist is not the narrator. The first person is actually talking about her brother—or is it her ex-boyfriend who is the narrator, we are not sure until later. What is more interesting is that this first person shifts later on to a different narrator in Acts II and III. We get early warning that familiarity with two things will help the reader have fun: sci-fi culture and a bit of Spanish: “…Oscar showed the genius his grandmother insisted was part of the family patrimony. Could write in Elvish, could speak Chakobsa, could differentiate between a Slan, a Dorsai, and a Lensman in acute detail, knew more about the Marvel Universe than Stan Lee, and was a role playing fanatic. (38)” As our intro to Oscar continues, “Listen palomo: you have to grab a muchacha, y metéselo. The will take care of everything. Start with a fea. Coje that fea y metéselo! Tio Rudolfo had four kids with three different women so the nigger was without doubt the family’s resident metéselo expert. (43)” These two lines alone tell you that knowledge of a certain type of popular culture is important and that the slang and voice is very real. It sounds almost like some Hispanic comedians. Rapid fire, bringing in relatives, the use of slang that if you are not part of the culture would get you in trouble (e.g. nigger) and a mix of Spanish that if you know a little you can puzzle out more, but you have to think about it and puzzle it out. This technique reminds me a bit of Riddley Walker…slow the reader down. I noticed a reference to Diaz somewhere that he did this intentionally, also to mimic the learning experience of an immigrant. There also seems to be quite the set of blogs noting that he got the accents wrong on many of the words. This does not bother me as a reader as most street Spanish is really not accurate.

Danticat does not thrust us into the language of her characters—this does not mean they don’t have a voice, but we are not sing-songing with the character. It does not have that added layer that Diaz has. “’Stay here,’ my mother said to me in Creole. (40)” Denticat keeps the foreign words foreign, “…from now on her name is Manman. (30)” and “ How much did I win? Ten gourdes. (30)” We have no problem understanding and this merely adds flavor to the text and adds a level of authority that the writer knows the language, but does not burden us with it. Two contrasting techniques. Danticat makes for faster reading, but the language is not really part of the voice, nor a layer of the actual book.

Interestingly, Gibson’s work in this regard more closely resembles Diaz’s. They both leave it to the reader to discover the meaning of the world they build. This is where good science fiction tends to overlap into good literary fiction quite often—letting the reader discover the world and figure it out on their own. The new words, whether made up or from a different culture or era are part of the work. They add another layer. That said, as an aside, Gibson’s pacing is pure genre fiction while the pacing of both Diaz and Danticat is slower and more nuanced. Pacing will be the focus of some other response. Examples of words or phrases that force the reader to puzzle out the world in Gibson include, “She propped her feet on the ledge of a hotdesk. (5)” From context we figure out the desk is plugged into the Internet and other systems. More interesting is the virtual reality descriptions. There is no lead in, we just need to figure it out. Chapter 2 starts with:

They met in a jungle clearing.

Kelsey had done the vegetation: big bright Rouseau leaves, cartoon orchids flecked with her idea of tropical colors […] Zona, the only one telepresent who’d ever seen anything like a real jungle, had done the audio …(13).



Context is for both Diaz and Gibson hugely important. We figure out “telepresent” pretty easily, but not completely. It is left for the reader to imagine and learn as one goes on.

Another interesting contrast between Diaz and Danticat is the first person use. Diaz ostensibly starts with the first person—although the first “I” does not arrive for a number of pages. Diaz, in fact, separates the “I” paragraphs from the rest (but does not do so in the footnotes—the use of footnotes in Diaz is a separate subject, but worth noting here. The footnotes are an important part of the work and it is rare to see this in fiction.). Pages 18-19 have the first person and then the rest of the Act I (as I call it) is largely third person, but we feel the intimacy. This is not an ordinary third person, but it is not really a first person, it is an intimate telling you the story from almost an omniscient view. This is really hard to pull off—certainly something I would not dare to yet. One way he does this is by dropping the dialogue quotations. Another is the way that feelings of others are conveyed. Witness the interplay between his friend who is a girl—but not girlfriend:

You have beautiful breasts, he said as an opener.

Confusion, alarm. Oscar. What’s the matter with you?

He looked out through the glass at Manhattan’s western flank, looked out like he was some deep nigger. Then he told her.

There were no surprises. Her eyes went soft, she put a hand on his hand, her chair scraped closer, there was a strand of yellow in her teeth. Oscar, she said gently, I have a boyfriend. (75)



We have already started to suspect (and this is never really confirmed) that the narrator, who comes in occasionally in the first person, as in the footnotes, has interviewed all of Oscars contacts. In fact we as the reader think that the narrator is probably Oscar’s sister, then we decide may it is not. “That night he and his sister fell asleep on the couch. (74).” But, we have “And that is how I ended up in Santo Domingo. (105)” Certainly, we know that later on in the book it is not. We, as readers, are not 100% sure if the writer is a different “I” between the main text and the footnotes, or if the book is really a set of interviews that are then transcribed by the narrator – Lola’s ex-boyfriend. Ultimately, we decide he has written the whole thing, but the POV changes along the way make it interesting. Again, I am being pulled into examining Diaz’s work more than the other two—illustrating that it is the more powerfully written, even from simply the craft perspective, novel.

Both Gibson and Diaz make use of the reader’s knowledge of popular culture in a variety of ways, never insulting the reader, but rather inviting them to explore it more if they have not already. One that I found interesting in Gibson was a reference to “…that country singer her mother liked, Ashleigh Modine Carter. Kind of a meshback thing, but with money. (23)” This is funny at a couple of levels. The reference to the Carter Family in a futuristic book and the slang meshback, which is current and fairly southern (the protagonist in this scene is in Seattle). Diaz litters the entire book with popular reference, which the narrator makes a point of being in your face about. The narrator in Diaz’s is, indeed, using the lexicon of Dungeons and Dragons, sci-fi, comic books in no small part as a tribute to Oscar, rather than because he would use that himself. The point being you need to understand this lexicon if you are to understand Oscar. Most of his references are overt, very often Lord of the Rings, but a few are fairly obscure for the modern reader, but totally accurate for one who was into this in the 1980s and 1990s. “Jack Pujols of course: the school’s handsomest (read: whitest) boy, a haughty slender melnibonian of European stock… (130)” is referencing Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock (who is British). The reference is interesting at many layers. Elric is albino, so not only is he white, he is really white. He is also a bit of a doomed character, which ultimately this Jack Pujols is also. Elric is also of a noble race that views the rest of humans (which are actually a different younger race) as below them. Utterly below them. The Melniboneans also tended to torture and in other ways treat the non-Melniboneans badly.

This trickling in references that have important meanings and do lead us to understand that the narrator is ultimately Lola’s boyfriend and not Lola. “Even your humble Watcher, reviewing her old pictures, is struck by what a fucking babe she was.” The Watchers were part of the Fantastic Four comics—I never really read comics, but knew this—that observed and compiled information without interfering. His references do get quite obscure when he uses “Breasts of Luba” which I believe refer to a common figurine/statue that the Luba tribe of Africa is known for. Then, as is my nature, I did some online searching and I now believe that Diaz may have been referring to a comic book Love and Rockets, with “Luba” by Los Bros Hernandez. The protagonist is fiery woman with enormous breasts. Part of the underground comics scene of the 1990s.

Before moving away from Diaz, which really could take all of the analysis, I have to mention one last reference the narrator makes that made me laugh. “(The fucking of poor prietas was considered standard operating procedure for elites just as long as it was kep on the do-lo, what is elsewhere called the Strom Thurmond Maneuver.) (148)” I remember well when Strom had to acknowledge that not only had he had a child through an affair, but a black woman as well. Strom was once quoted (which I steal from Wikipedia and they take from Timothy Noah’s book) as saying: “I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the niggra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.”

All three books have a similar protagonist age—at least to start with. The young teenager. However, Diaz and Gibson never go the ‘young adult’ route in language. Danticat does keep the language simple and short as the young woman/girl is first introduced to us and as she fearfully gets used to New York. The simple, young feeling works in Danticat to emphasize the situation. The language is good, the descriptions good, but there are few hidden layers. The 14 year old in Gibson is rather adult and her language reflects this. Contrast Gibson’s girl of 14 observing the woman next to her in the plane, “Then she smiled. It was a slow smile, modular, as thou there were stages to It, each one governed by a separate shyness, or hesitation. (58)” With Sophie meeting a woman with her mother for the first time, “Jacqueline was wearing large sponge rollers under a hair net on her head. My mother bought some face cream that promised to make her skin lighter. (51)” One feels significantly younger and less sophisticated than the other—as she is. This works, however it does make Danticat’s a bit more of an easy read and one ends up not slowing down for meanings. Yes, the quoted line from Danticat illustrates the discrimination that blacks feel in a subtle manner, but truthfully this has been done to death. Diaz in the early line about the young boy being melnibonese does it much better and conveys not only the skin tone, but a host of other history.

Different authors use parenthesis in different ways. One way that Diaz used that was interesting, within the context of narration and POV, was that often the parenthesis were where you felt you were getting an actual quote from an interview: “It felt unbelievably good to Beli, shook her to her core. (For the first time I actually felt like I owned my skin, like it was me and I was it.) (185-6)” No similar use of parenthesis, or of footnotes, exists in the other two books.

In summary, Gibson uses rather classic techniques and is quite genre, albeit good genre, in his writing style. He has two protagonists and alternates between them every chapter, which is a classic technique. He reveals his world through the story rather than through telling. He has a couple of twists that depend on the new world and technology at the end. Danticat is a rather classic immigrant coming of age story that is well done, but does not have the superb flare of Diaz. It was fun to have rather coincidental similar themes between Diaz and Danticat to contrast similar—at a basic level—stories that are told so differently.

As an epilogue I would state that all three were very readable, enjoyable, and well done, but Diaz’s stands out as the innovative one that conveyed multiple layers and was truly distinctive.

Works Cited.



Diaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Detroit. Thorndike Press. 2007. Print.



Gibson, William. Idoru. New York. Berkley Press. 1997. Print.



Danticat, Edwidge. New York. Vintage Books. 1998. Print.











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Review of Breath, Eyes, Memory

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is from a combined response to three books I did for my current MFA program. I would separately note that while this is a fine book, it seems to be a bit over rated by many. It is a good story and it is well done, but it does not have the many layers that I expected, especially after reading Junot Diaz.



Response to Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat, Idoru by William Gibson, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz



Attempting a combined response with these three books does not make sense at first blush, but contrasts are often interesting and illuminating, so I will attempt it. My real hesitation is that Diaz’s writing from a craft perspective brings so much more to the table that it may overwhelm the observations of the other two. That too may be worth knowing and understanding. Why does one book, out of three strong books, strike me as more powerfully done than the others?

All three books do world building. Diaz is building the world of a Dominican immigrant family and Danticat is doing something very similar from a Haitian perspective. Same large island, two very different voices—although the perspectives of violence and history have similarities. Both are first person, giving the personal power to the book, but Diaz’s first person is the more interesting from technique. Diaz writes what I consider a Shakespearian tragedy. You know it is going to end badly, but there are three acts (despite breaking the book into more parts, they feel like three major acts) and they are so well done, that you enjoy the ride toward tragedy. You feel for the characters, but still have fun. This is because of the voice.

What hits you immediately is the constant reference to popular culture of a particular kind—fantasy, science fiction, comic book. This is the vernacular of the protagonist. Yet, what is more interesting is that the protagonist is not the narrator. The first person is actually talking about her brother—or is it her ex-boyfriend who is the narrator, we are not sure until later. What is more interesting is that this first person shifts later on to a different narrator in Acts II and III. We get early warning that familiarity with two things will help the reader have fun: sci-fi culture and a bit of Spanish: “…Oscar showed the genius his grandmother insisted was part of the family patrimony. Could write in Elvish, could speak Chakobsa, could differentiate between a Slan, a Dorsai, and a Lensman in acute detail, knew more about the Marvel Universe than Stan Lee, and was a role playing fanatic. (38)” As our intro to Oscar continues, “Listen palomo: you have to grab a muchacha, y metéselo. The will take care of everything. Start with a fea. Coje that fea y metéselo! Tio Rudolfo had four kids with three different women so the nigger was without doubt the family’s resident metéselo expert. (43)” These two lines alone tell you that knowledge of a certain type of popular culture is important and that the slang and voice is very real. It sounds almost like some Hispanic comedians. Rapid fire, bringing in relatives, the use of slang that if you are not part of the culture would get you in trouble (e.g. nigger) and a mix of Spanish that if you know a little you can puzzle out more, but you have to think about it and puzzle it out. This technique reminds me a bit of Riddley Walker…slow the reader down. I noticed a reference to Diaz somewhere that he did this intentionally, also to mimic the learning experience of an immigrant. There also seems to be quite the set of blogs noting that he got the accents wrong on many of the words. This does not bother me as a reader as most street Spanish is really not accurate.

Danticat does not thrust us into the language of her characters—this does not mean they don’t have a voice, but we are not sing-songing with the character. It does not have that added layer that Diaz has. “’Stay here,’ my mother said to me in Creole. (40)” Denticat keeps the foreign words foreign, “…from now on her name is Manman. (30)” and “ How much did I win? Ten gourdes. (30)” We have no problem understanding and this merely adds flavor to the text and adds a level of authority that the writer knows the language, but does not burden us with it. Two contrasting techniques. Danticat makes for faster reading, but the language is not really part of the voice, nor a layer of the actual book.

Interestingly, Gibson’s work in this regard more closely resembles Diaz’s. They both leave it to the reader to discover the meaning of the world they build. This is where good science fiction tends to overlap into good literary fiction quite often—letting the reader discover the world and figure it out on their own. The new words, whether made up or from a different culture or era are part of the work. They add another layer. That said, as an aside, Gibson’s pacing is pure genre fiction while the pacing of both Diaz and Danticat is slower and more nuanced. Pacing will be the focus of some other response. Examples of words or phrases that force the reader to puzzle out the world in Gibson include, “She propped her feet on the ledge of a hotdesk. (5)” From context we figure out the desk is plugged into the Internet and other systems. More interesting is the virtual reality descriptions. There is no lead in, we just need to figure it out. Chapter 2 starts with:

They met in a jungle clearing.

Kelsey had done the vegetation: big bright Rouseau leaves, cartoon orchids flecked with her idea of tropical colors […] Zona, the only one telepresent who’d ever seen anything like a real jungle, had done the audio …(13).



Context is for both Diaz and Gibson hugely important. We figure out “telepresent” pretty easily, but not completely. It is left for the reader to imagine and learn as one goes on.

Another interesting contrast between Diaz and Danticat is the first person use. Diaz ostensibly starts with the first person—although the first “I” does not arrive for a number of pages. Diaz, in fact, separates the “I” paragraphs from the rest (but does not do so in the footnotes—the use of footnotes in Diaz is a separate subject, but worth noting here. The footnotes are an important part of the work and it is rare to see this in fiction.). Pages 18-19 have the first person and then the rest of the Act I (as I call it) is largely third person, but we feel the intimacy. This is not an ordinary third person, but it is not really a first person, it is an intimate telling you the story from almost an omniscient view. This is really hard to pull off—certainly something I would not dare to yet. One way he does this is by dropping the dialogue quotations. Another is the way that feelings of others are conveyed. Witness the interplay between his friend who is a girl—but not girlfriend:

You have beautiful breasts, he said as an opener.

Confusion, alarm. Oscar. What’s the matter with you?

He looked out through the glass at Manhattan’s western flank, looked out like he was some deep nigger. Then he told her.

There were no surprises. Her eyes went soft, she put a hand on his hand, her chair scraped closer, there was a strand of yellow in her teeth. Oscar, she said gently, I have a boyfriend. (75)



We have already started to suspect (and this is never really confirmed) that the narrator, who comes in occasionally in the first person, as in the footnotes, has interviewed all of Oscars contacts. In fact we as the reader think that the narrator is probably Oscar’s sister, then we decide may it is not. “That night he and his sister fell asleep on the couch. (74).” But, we have “And that is how I ended up in Santo Domingo. (105)” Certainly, we know that later on in the book it is not. We, as readers, are not 100% sure if the writer is a different “I” between the main text and the footnotes, or if the book is really a set of interviews that are then transcribed by the narrator – Lola’s ex-boyfriend. Ultimately, we decide he has written the whole thing, but the POV changes along the way make it interesting. Again, I am being pulled into examining Diaz’s work more than the other two—illustrating that it is the more powerfully written, even from simply the craft perspective, novel.

Both Gibson and Diaz make use of the reader’s knowledge of popular culture in a variety of ways, never insulting the reader, but rather inviting them to explore it more if they have not already. One that I found interesting in Gibson was a reference to “…that country singer her mother liked, Ashleigh Modine Carter. Kind of a meshback thing, but with money. (23)” This is funny at a couple of levels. The reference to the Carter Family in a futuristic book and the slang meshback, which is current and fairly southern (the protagonist in this scene is in Seattle). Diaz litters the entire book with popular reference, which the narrator makes a point of being in your face about. The narrator in Diaz’s is, indeed, using the lexicon of Dungeons and Dragons, sci-fi, comic books in no small part as a tribute to Oscar, rather than because he would use that himself. The point being you need to understand this lexicon if you are to understand Oscar. Most of his references are overt, very often Lord of the Rings, but a few are fairly obscure for the modern reader, but totally accurate for one who was into this in the 1980s and 1990s. “Jack Pujols of course: the school’s handsomest (read: whitest) boy, a haughty slender melnibonian of European stock… (130)” is referencing Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock (who is British). The reference is interesting at many layers. Elric is albino, so not only is he white, he is really white. He is also a bit of a doomed character, which ultimately this Jack Pujols is also. Elric is also of a noble race that views the rest of humans (which are actually a different younger race) as below them. Utterly below them. The Melniboneans also tended to torture and in other ways treat the non-Melniboneans badly.

This trickling in references that have important meanings and do lead us to understand that the narrator is ultimately Lola’s boyfriend and not Lola. “Even your humble Watcher, reviewing her old pictures, is struck by what a fucking babe she was.” The Watchers were part of the Fantastic Four comics—I never really read comics, but knew this—that observed and compiled information without interfering. His references do get quite obscure when he uses “Breasts of Luba” which I believe refer to a common figurine/statue that the Luba tribe of Africa is known for. Then, as is my nature, I did some online searching and I now believe that Diaz may have been referring to a comic book Love and Rockets, with “Luba” by Los Bros Hernandez. The protagonist is fiery woman with enormous breasts. Part of the underground comics scene of the 1990s.

Before moving away from Diaz, which really could take all of the analysis, I have to mention one last reference the narrator makes that made me laugh. “(The fucking of poor prietas was considered standard operating procedure for elites just as long as it was kep on the do-lo, what is elsewhere called the Strom Thurmond Maneuver.) (148)” I remember well when Strom had to acknowledge that not only had he had a child through an affair, but a black woman as well. Strom was once quoted (which I steal from Wikipedia and they take from Timothy Noah’s book) as saying: “I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the niggra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.”

All three books have a similar protagonist age—at least to start with. The young teenager. However, Diaz and Gibson never go the ‘young adult’ route in language. Danticat does keep the language simple and short as the young woman/girl is first introduced to us and as she fearfully gets used to New York. The simple, young feeling works in Danticat to emphasize the situation. The language is good, the descriptions good, but there are few hidden layers. The 14 year old in Gibson is rather adult and her language reflects this. Contrast Gibson’s girl of 14 observing the woman next to her in the plane, “Then she smiled. It was a slow smile, modular, as thou there were stages to It, each one governed by a separate shyness, or hesitation. (58)” With Sophie meeting a woman with her mother for the first time, “Jacqueline was wearing large sponge rollers under a hair net on her head. My mother bought some face cream that promised to make her skin lighter. (51)” One feels significantly younger and less sophisticated than the other—as she is. This works, however it does make Danticat’s a bit more of an easy read and one ends up not slowing down for meanings. Yes, the quoted line from Danticat illustrates the discrimination that blacks feel in a subtle manner, but truthfully this has been done to death. Diaz in the early line about the young boy being melnibonese does it much better and conveys not only the skin tone, but a host of other history.

Different authors use parenthesis in different ways. One way that Diaz used that was interesting, within the context of narration and POV, was that often the parenthesis were where you felt you were getting an actual quote from an interview: “It felt unbelievably good to Beli, shook her to her core. (For the first time I actually felt like I owned my skin, like it was me and I was it.) (185-6)” No similar use of parenthesis, or of footnotes, exists in the other two books.

In summary, Gibson uses rather classic techniques and is quite genre, albeit good genre, in his writing style. He has two protagonists and alternates between them every chapter, which is a classic technique. He reveals his world through the story rather than through telling. He has a couple of twists that depend on the new world and technology at the end. Danticat is a rather classic immigrant coming of age story that is well done, but does not have the superb flare of Diaz. It was fun to have rather coincidental similar themes between Diaz and Danticat to contrast similar—at a basic level—stories that are told so differently.

As an epilogue I would state that all three were very readable, enjoyable, and well done, but Diaz’s stands out as the innovative one that conveyed multiple layers and was truly distinctive.

Works Cited.



Diaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Detroit. Thorndike Press. 2007. Print.



Gibson, William. Idoru. New York. Berkley Press. 1997. Print.



Danticat, Edwidge. New York. Vintage Books. 1998. Print.











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Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I read this for my current MFA work, so my review is more from a writer's craft perspective. Below is a cut and past from a response paper. The Japanese Kanji that I put in to illustrate some things will be (is) lost.







Despite the author’s protestations to the contrary, this is classic—nearly archetypical—quality science fiction. I have been reading science fiction and fantasy for approximately 42 years, at one time probably consuming thirty to forty books per year (albeit not all were quality!). The plot, the technique of revealing slowly rather than giving background, the devolution of man, are all subjects that have been treated—at a surface level—in similar manners. The idea of speaking only in metaphors as a language has been explored in science fiction as has the rediscovery of gunpowder post apocalypse. What makes Riddley Walker unique and worthwhile is the language. More precisely, the depth of the language as a part of the story itself.

Even here I must resist the temptation to dive into the analysis as to whether the language creation approaches believability or not. I had discussions with a close friend whose PhD is in linguistics on this. The short answer is “who really knows and to keep it readable one has to go in some directions.” Reading Beowulf in its original form—or attempting to— shows how much language can change in hundreds of years—let alone the over two thousand that is mentioned in Riddley Walker (125). Regardless as to whether it is accurate or not, it can be accepted and is largely believable.

To what purpose is the massive effort by Hoban directed? He states that Riddleyspeak is crafted partially because it “slows the reader down to Riddley’s rate of comprehension.” Yes, there is no doubt that by creating Riddleyspeak—Hoban’s term—we are forced to slow down. I would argue that Riddley’s rate of comprehension for many things is extremely fast for a twelve year old, but that is a side comment. When two out of three words are Riddelyspeak we are forced to slow down. When we slow down, we start to ponder a number of things: what are the new meanings of the words—in particular the double meanings, why has the language evolved this way, and most intriguingly what subplot and subtext is implied by the language itself.

The latter is what truly distinguishes Riddley Walker from most other writing I have encountered. The evolution of the language is its own story and subtext. The language itself is a metaphor for the change that the society has gone through. The reader knows that he is missing something and it is left to the reader to decide how much to puzzle. The danger is that one can read too much into the words and meaning. For example this sentence that Goodparley utters, “This here yellerboy stoan the Salt 4 it want to be whats in it to be. (143)”

The paragraph and page preceding it is discussing how boys want to become men and Goodparley killed his own mentor, because his mentor was making him boy for him. It is clear that this has a double meaning of being raped, or at least having sex—a bit the way Greeks and Romans did in ancient times—but Hoban gives multiple meanings to the word “man” and “boy.” “Goodparley said, ‘Everything wants to man dont it. Wants to go from littl to big. Wants to be what in it to be.’(142-3)” So when we read “yellerboy” we ponder the meaning of “boy” here. We are told by the language and Goodparely’s description that the “yellerboy stoan” has some hidden power within it that wants to come out. Then we ponder why the word “Salt” is capitalized. Given what we have read earlier this could be simply because it is important-“Plomercy” is capitalized (meaning diplomacy). Or it could have historic meaning from an old name, such as “Parments” meaning Parliament. So then the reader, knowing already that this is post apocalyptic, might be tempted to think, hmm, Salt 4 might be a double meaning, referencing a SALT 4 treaty, because Goodparley thinks it is key to a big bang. But as we start to figure out this is sulfur and then saltpeter (sodium nitrate) is added to it to make gunpowder…and sodium nitrate is a salt. Then one can start to think well the 4 might be simply the way all other numbers are written, or it might be, right next to Salt, if it is saltpeter, the ratio of saltpeter to sulfur. Very roughly, black powder is 4 to 5 parts saltpeter to 1 part charcoal and 1 part sulfer. Or, in the end we simply decide that Salt 4 is indeed the word Sulfur and yellow stoan is a bit redundant. This very simple sentence thus has multiple meanings and layers and there are dozens of these per page. So, the reader has to read slow to say the words out loud and to ponder their meanings and the meanings apply directly to the plot itself.

Although it is never stated, we quickly come to the conclusion that the language evolved due to a lack of writing—we understand that there was a new dark age and this is the age after that dark age. The language we are reading only makes sense if we read it aloud—at least read it aloud in our heads—almost syllable by syllable. This is different than normal reading where you see the entire word at once and absorb the word without reading it letter by letter, syllable by syllable. Additionally, one has to intentionally slur the words and often string them together to get the meaning. We assume this is because of hundreds of years of listening only. The easy examples of the language evolution:

Killed becomes “kilt” (the “t” becomes the new “ed” … which is what you hear when you say many words ending in “ed” quickly.)



Send becomes “sen,” under becomes “unner,” west becomes “wes,” and so on.



I hardly need reference individual words that are used throughout the book. These ring true, or possible, as they are already the way words are slurred orally by (all too) many. With literacy disappearing this seems reasonable as a way for language to degenerate, or evolve. That this then becomes the way it is written by some demonstrates that it has become fully incorporated into the language and that society is only partially literate. This also rings true when comparing to the writings of many in England and the U.S. from even the 1800s. Standard, “correct,” spellings of words is a relatively recent phenomena. Riddlespeak is an oral language that is only weakly reinforced by writing. It hints at all sorts of things that makes us want to explore the language as much as the main story.

Why, for instance, the breaking up of words. Simple compounds are broken into separate words and even what we don’t consider a compound now is broken into two words:

“Littl Shyning Man wer a nother thing and tirely.(149)” and + tirely = entirely is just one of countless per chapter. I recalled the little Japanese and Chinese characters I know and it struck me that in some ways this is similar to the composition of words from sub characters to form a new word. This made it ring true to my mind. Words, or sub words might be used in combination to mean different things similar to the kanji of Japanese. For example in Japanese “hi” (pronounced he) is the symbol it means sun, or day, or fire, depending on the context. The word book is moto . The word for fireplace is hinomoto and in kanji is . Hoban is using a bit of a similar technique. “And” has nothing to do with entirely, but because of the sound is used in a split compound word. I found this interesting and knowing that Japanese and Chinese does something sort of similar made this more believable. I have no idea of Hoban was thinking of this when doing this, but he had a firm enough understanding of language and going back and forth with phonetics to written that he may have come up with it independently.

The beauty of all good fiction is that, like all art, each reader will interpret the work in their own way. Some will see metaphors where the author never consciously intended. The genius of Hoban’s invention of Riddleyspeak is that not only does it slow down the reader as he overtly states as his intention, but it almost forces the reader into thinking about double, triple, or more meanings of the words. Then, by layering on an obvious oral tradition in the culture, where the main character’s role—and his father’s before him—is to interpret a traveling “show” for the listeners makes us as readers consider the entire book as a show, with shows within it, and those shows reference past oral histories. Thus, some metaphors become metaphors within the language that has been invented, which are in turn metaphors for the story itself.

Staying with the same page as before (149) we can see this layered metaphor. Riddley is thinking of a stanza—for want of a better word—from Eusa:



“7. Thay dogs stud up on thear hyn legs & taukin lyk men. Folleree sed, Lukin for the 1 you wil aul ways fyn thay 2. Folleroo sed, They 2 is twice as bad as the 1.”



Riddley tells us explicitly that he is using it as a metaphor for what is happening with him. But, the metaphor itself is a story we are not familiar with in detail, we haven’t lived it as he seems to have through his oral tradition (see my later comments on the Star Trek episode). At the same time this metaphor starts to become the common thread of “bringing things together can be bad” and we are reminded of the sulfur and saltpeter…and that is then applied to bringing the sulfur to Belnot Phist cause his demise.

This oral tradition that comes up over and over—the word “Lissener” (149) has multiple meanings too--is similar to Native American storytelling, or African storytelling is a layer of complexity and metaphor that is omnipresent in the book. It reminds me of a Star Trek Next Generation episode (number 102) where the race encountered speaks entirely in metaphor. The universal translator is rendered useless because the words meanings are only in the metaphor, not in the literal translation. “..the Tamarian language is entirely based on metaphors from Tamarian folklore. They learn that Darmok was a hunter and Tanagra is an island, but nothing else. Without knowing the stories behind the metaphors, the Tamarian language remains indecipherable. (Wikipedia)” One wonders if either of the authors were exposed to Hoban. One, Philip LaZebnik has a Classics degree from Harvard.

Regardless, the analogy is that until one starts to understand the stories behind the oral histories we read in Riddley—or rather “hear” from Riddley’s ears—we do not decipher the full richness of the book. This will be a book I need to return to in six months to see what I catch then.

My issue in citing particular passages is that I can flip open the book to any page and start to explore the metaphors and language. Thus, the ones I will explore will be simply ones that struck me while reading enough to slap a sticky note into the book—I hate writing directly in a book, it destroys the reread later on.

One thing that struck me were the—at first blush—apparent anachronisms. For example, “hes getting his serkits jus that little bit over loadit (51).” Circuit in this usage has only an electronics meaning. Yet we know that this civilization has no real concept of anything so sophisticated. Through this and other phrases, or words, such as “program,” or “gallack seas” (for galaxies) we understand how much the past glory of the human race means to these people. They have tried to preserve through words and oral histories old phrases and meanings, without understanding their full meanings. What is so interesting is that we figure this out, it is never told to us. The use of the language tells this story.

Indeed, Riddley spends a considerable amount of time thinking about metaphors himself. What do the oral histories mean, is fundamentally what he is constantly asking himself, or explicitly asking Goodparley. He (Riddley) gives us the entire Eusa Story (30-36). Each stanza is a metaphor used throughout the story. Stanza 7, which is partially repeated on 149, ends with “Eusa sed, I woan be tol by amminals.(31)” The dogs are telling him something. The dogs are then repeated in Riddley’s world and they are a metaphor for people not listening and having to learn from experience, versus being told, because they don’t trust the people who are below them.

The Eusa Story is a metaphor, or perhaps closer to an allegory to Riddley’s story, which in turn is an metaphor for human history, including the atomic bomb. Stanza 32 ends with “Yu let thay Chaynjis owt & now yuv go to go on thru them. (36)” We see the changes of Riddley himself and of course the change of gunpowder being re-introduced to the world. Stanza 37 has two interesting lines: “How mene Chaynjis are thayr?” and “As menne as reqwyrd. Eusa sed, Reqwyrd by wut? The littl Man sed, Reqwyrd by the idear uv yu. Eusa sed, Wut is the idear uv me? The Littl Man sed, That we doan no til yuv gon thru and yur Chaynjis. (36)” This stanza is itself a metaphor for Riddley’s story, of change and knowing yourself, and of history repeating itself with big changes and doomed to do so until it figures it out, which is the bigger plot of the story and finally note that the capitalization of Chaynjis gives it emphasis and different layers of meaning. The writing technique here that is so interesting in the language combined with the trick of using an explicit oral history that the characters know to represent the story they are living.

These analyses of the writing craft are supposed to be a few pages long. I see I have 25 more sticky notes I have not yet addressed.

I would like to try and address the voice that Riddley has. The first person gives the intimate innermost thoughts common in first person, but beyond that his voice is that of a story teller. An oral tradition voice embedded in the character that highlights an oral tradition society. As with the language itself, there are countless examples of this. The following I chose because it illustrates this more explicitly than some other places:



And stil I aint said all there is to say about that morning in the aulders. The bloody meat and boan of it. The worl is ful of things waiting to happen. That the meat and the boan of it right there. You myt think you can jus go her and there doing nothing. Happening nothing. You cant tho you bleeding cant. You put your self on any road and some thing wil show its self to you. Wanting to happen. Waiting to happen. (154)



This shows the story teller in Riddley and the self-awareness and searching. He sees meanings in everything. That is his job and gift. The voice is unique, something I strive for, but often fail.

In the interest of brevity, I will leave deeper analysis of the meanings behind “stoan” and “hart of the stoan” and “hart of the wud” and the way simple words like “tel” have layers of meaning for a PhD thesis. Suffice to say that in just over 200 pages Hoban weaves not just a tale, but a multilayered story of possible evolutions of language, societies, and cultures, where the reader can decide how deep to dig, but is never sure if the bottom has been reached.





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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was for my current MFA program, so most of this is from the writing craft perspective. Additionally, below is a "combined" response to three books...



Response to Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat, Idoru by William Gibson, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Attempting a combined response with these three books does not make sense at first blush, but contrasts are often interesting and illuminating, so I will attempt it. My real hesitation is that Diaz’s writing from a craft perspective brings so much more to the table that it may overwhelm the observations of the other two. That too may be worth knowing and understanding. Why does one book, out of three strong books, strike me as more powerfully done than the others?

All three books do world building. Diaz is building the world of a Dominican immigrant family and Danticat is doing something very similar from a Haitian perspective. Same large island, two very different voices—although the perspectives of violence and history have similarities. Both are first person, giving the personal power to the book, but Diaz’s first person is the more interesting from technique. Diaz writes what I consider a Shakespearian tragedy. You know it is going to end badly, but there are three acts (despite breaking the book into more parts, they feel like three major acts) and they are so well done, that you enjoy the ride toward tragedy. You feel for the characters, but still have fun. This is because of the voice.

What hits you immediately is the constant reference to popular culture of a particular kind—fantasy, science fiction, comic book. This is the vernacular of the protagonist. Yet, what is more interesting is that the protagonist is not the narrator. The first person is actually talking about her brother—or is it her ex-boyfriend who is the narrator, we are not sure until later. What is more interesting is that this first person shifts later on to a different narrator in Acts II and III. We get early warning that familiarity with two things will help the reader have fun: sci-fi culture and a bit of Spanish: “…Oscar showed the genius his grandmother insisted was part of the family patrimony. Could write in Elvish, could speak Chakobsa, could differentiate between a Slan, a Dorsai, and a Lensman in acute detail, knew more about the Marvel Universe than Stan Lee, and was a role playing fanatic. (38)” As our intro to Oscar continues, “Listen palomo: you have to grab a muchacha, y metéselo. The will take care of everything. Start with a fea. Coje that fea y metéselo! Tio Rudolfo had four kids with three different women so the nigger was without doubt the family’s resident metéselo expert. (43)” These two lines alone tell you that knowledge of a certain type of popular culture is important and that the slang and voice is very real. It sounds almost like some Hispanic comedians. Rapid fire, bringing in relatives, the use of slang that if you are not part of the culture would get you in trouble (e.g. nigger) and a mix of Spanish that if you know a little you can puzzle out more, but you have to think about it and puzzle it out. This technique reminds me a bit of Riddley Walker…slow the reader down. I noticed a reference to Diaz somewhere that he did this intentionally, also to mimic the learning experience of an immigrant. There also seems to be quite the set of blogs noting that he got the accents wrong on many of the words. This does not bother me as a reader as most street Spanish is really not accurate.

Danticat does not thrust us into the language of her characters—this does not mean they don’t have a voice, but we are not sing-songing with the character. It does not have that added layer that Diaz has. “’Stay here,’ my mother said to me in Creole. (40)” Denticat keeps the foreign words foreign, “…from now on her name is Manman. (30)” and “ How much did I win? Ten gourdes. (30)” We have no problem understanding and this merely adds flavor to the text and adds a level of authority that the writer knows the language, but does not burden us with it. Two contrasting techniques. Danticat makes for faster reading, but the language is not really part of the voice, nor a layer of the actual book.

Interestingly, Gibson’s work in this regard more closely resembles Diaz’s. They both leave it to the reader to discover the meaning of the world they build. This is where good science fiction tends to overlap into good literary fiction quite often—letting the reader discover the world and figure it out on their own. The new words, whether made up or from a different culture or era are part of the work. They add another layer. That said, as an aside, Gibson’s pacing is pure genre fiction while the pacing of both Diaz and Danticat is slower and more nuanced. Pacing will be the focus of some other response. Examples of words or phrases that force the reader to puzzle out the world in Gibson include, “She propped her feet on the ledge of a hotdesk. (5)” From context we figure out the desk is plugged into the Internet and other systems. More interesting is the virtual reality descriptions. There is no lead in, we just need to figure it out. Chapter 2 starts with:

They met in a jungle clearing.

Kelsey had done the vegetation: big bright Rouseau leaves, cartoon orchids flecked with her idea of tropical colors […] Zona, the only one telepresent who’d ever seen anything like a real jungle, had done the audio …(13).



Context is for both Diaz and Gibson hugely important. We figure out “telepresent” pretty easily, but not completely. It is left for the reader to imagine and learn as one goes on.

Another interesting contrast between Diaz and Danticat is the first person use. Diaz ostensibly starts with the first person—although the first “I” does not arrive for a number of pages. Diaz, in fact, separates the “I” paragraphs from the rest (but does not do so in the footnotes—the use of footnotes in Diaz is a separate subject, but worth noting here. The footnotes are an important part of the work and it is rare to see this in fiction.). Pages 18-19 have the first person and then the rest of the Act I (as I call it) is largely third person, but we feel the intimacy. This is not an ordinary third person, but it is not really a first person, it is an intimate telling you the story from almost an omniscient view. This is really hard to pull off—certainly something I would not dare to yet. One way he does this is by dropping the dialogue quotations. Another is the way that feelings of others are conveyed. Witness the interplay between his friend who is a girl—but not girlfriend:

You have beautiful breasts, he said as an opener.

Confusion, alarm. Oscar. What’s the matter with you?

He looked out through the glass at Manhattan’s western flank, looked out like he was some deep nigger. Then he told her.

There were no surprises. Her eyes went soft, she put a hand on his hand, her chair scraped closer, there was a strand of yellow in her teeth. Oscar, she said gently, I have a boyfriend. (75)



We have already started to suspect (and this is never really confirmed) that the narrator, who comes in occasionally in the first person, as in the footnotes, has interviewed all of Oscars contacts. In fact we as the reader think that the narrator is probably Oscar’s sister, then we decide may it is not. “That night he and his sister fell asleep on the couch. (74).” But, we have “And that is how I ended up in Santo Domingo. (105)” Certainly, we know that later on in the book it is not. We, as readers, are not 100% sure if the writer is a different “I” between the main text and the footnotes, or if the book is really a set of interviews that are then transcribed by the narrator – Lola’s ex-boyfriend. Ultimately, we decide he has written the whole thing, but the POV changes along the way make it interesting. Again, I am being pulled into examining Diaz’s work more than the other two—illustrating that it is the more powerfully written, even from simply the craft perspective, novel.

Both Gibson and Diaz make use of the reader’s knowledge of popular culture in a variety of ways, never insulting the reader, but rather inviting them to explore it more if they have not already. One that I found interesting in Gibson was a reference to “…that country singer her mother liked, Ashleigh Modine Carter. Kind of a meshback thing, but with money. (23)” This is funny at a couple of levels. The reference to the Carter Family in a futuristic book and the slang meshback, which is current and fairly southern (the protagonist in this scene is in Seattle). Diaz litters the entire book with popular reference, which the narrator makes a point of being in your face about. The narrator in Diaz’s is, indeed, using the lexicon of Dungeons and Dragons, sci-fi, comic books in no small part as a tribute to Oscar, rather than because he would use that himself. The point being you need to understand this lexicon if you are to understand Oscar. Most of his references are overt, very often Lord of the Rings, but a few are fairly obscure for the modern reader, but totally accurate for one who was into this in the 1980s and 1990s. “Jack Pujols of course: the school’s handsomest (read: whitest) boy, a haughty slender melnibonian of European stock… (130)” is referencing Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock (who is British). The reference is interesting at many layers. Elric is albino, so not only is he white, he is really white. He is also a bit of a doomed character, which ultimately this Jack Pujols is also. Elric is also of a noble race that views the rest of humans (which are actually a different younger race) as below them. Utterly below them. The Melniboneans also tended to torture and in other ways treat the non-Melniboneans badly.

This trickling in references that have important meanings and do lead us to understand that the narrator is ultimately Lola’s boyfriend and not Lola. “Even your humble Watcher, reviewing her old pictures, is struck by what a fucking babe she was.” The Watchers were part of the Fantastic Four comics—I never really read comics, but knew this—that observed and compiled information without interfering. His references do get quite obscure when he uses “Breasts of Luba” which I believe refer to a common figurine/statue that the Luba tribe of Africa is known for. Then, as is my nature, I did some online searching and I now believe that Diaz may have been referring to a comic book Love and Rockets, with “Luba” by Los Bros Hernandez. The protagonist is fiery woman with enormous breasts. Part of the underground comics scene of the 1990s.

Before moving away from Diaz, which really could take all of the analysis, I have to mention one last reference the narrator makes that made me laugh. “(The fucking of poor prietas was considered standard operating procedure for elites just as long as it was kep on the do-lo, what is elsewhere called the Strom Thurmond Maneuver.) (148)” I remember well when Strom had to acknowledge that not only had he had a child through an affair, but a black woman as well. Strom was once quoted (which I steal from Wikipedia and they take from Timothy Noah’s book) as saying: “I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the niggra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.”

All three books have a similar protagonist age—at least to start with. The young teenager. However, Diaz and Gibson never go the ‘young adult’ route in language. Danticat does keep the language simple and short as the young woman/girl is first introduced to us and as she fearfully gets used to New York. The simple, young feeling works in Danticat to emphasize the situation. The language is good, the descriptions good, but there are few hidden layers. The 14 year old in Gibson is rather adult and her language reflects this. Contrast Gibson’s girl of 14 observing the woman next to her in the plane, “Then she smiled. It was a slow smile, modular, as thou there were stages to It, each one governed by a separate shyness, or hesitation. (58)” With Sophie meeting a woman with her mother for the first time, “Jacqueline was wearing large sponge rollers under a hair net on her head. My mother bought some face cream that promised to make her skin lighter. (51)” One feels significantly younger and less sophisticated than the other—as she is. This works, however it does make Danticat’s a bit more of an easy read and one ends up not slowing down for meanings. Yes, the quoted line from Danticat illustrates the discrimination that blacks feel in a subtle manner, but truthfully this has been done to death. Diaz in the early line about the young boy being melnibonese does it much better and conveys not only the skin tone, but a host of other history.

Different authors use parenthesis in different ways. One way that Diaz used that was interesting, within the context of narration and POV, was that often the parenthesis were where you felt you were getting an actual quote from an interview: “It felt unbelievably good to Beli, shook her to her core. (For the first time I actually felt like I owned my skin, like it was me and I was it.) (185-6)” No similar use of parenthesis, or of footnotes, exists in the other two books.

In summary, Gibson uses rather classic techniques and is quite genre, albeit good genre, in his writing style. He has two protagonists and alternates between them every chapter, which is a classic technique. He reveals his world through the story rather than through telling. He has a couple of twists that depend on the new world and technology at the end. Danticat is a rather classic immigrant coming of age story that is well done, but does not have the superb flare of Diaz. It was fun to have rather coincidental similar themes between Diaz and Danticat to contrast similar—at a basic level—stories that are told so differently.

As an epilogue I would state that all three were very readable, enjoyable, and well done, but Diaz’s stands out as the innovative one that conveyed multiple layers and was truly distinctive.

Works Cited.



Diaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Detroit. Thorndike Press. 2007. Print.



Gibson, William. Idoru. New York. Berkley Press. 1997. Print.



Danticat, Edwidge. New York. Vintage Books. 1998. Print.











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