[fausto]

Speaking Spanish, I didn't have the same issues even though Díaz uses very local expressions.

Oscar Wao was a fun pleasant and often clever book but it was nowhere near as good as most critics would have you believe. Its flaws were way, way too important. In her NYT review, Kakutani said, admirative, the book "is so original it can only be described as Mario Vargas Llosa meets Star Trek meets David Foster Wallace meets Kanye West". This actually encompasses all the issues I have with the book. The Vargas Llosa bit is due to him writing La fiesta del chivo about the Trujillo dictatorship. While the Peruvian writer focused on the upper-class, Díaz does on people of lesser social standing. Very good, and very interesting but he can't prevent himself from trying to take cheapshots at Vargas Llosa's book: he shouldn't, as La fiesta is better written, better documented and most of all much more subtle. The Star Trek thing is true enough, but as Stewart said, it's there more for the flavour than anything else and it's probably too nerdy for the non-nerd or not nerdy enough for the real nerd. It also allows Díaz to indulge in far too many silly metaphors. The DFW thing comes, I guess, from the footnotes. DFW uses of same in Infinite Jest was creative, intriguing and interesting. Here, it's mannerist, most of the times a distraction rather than an interesting / funny / witty aside. DFW is maybe namedropped because of Díaz original take on popular culture. As for Kanye, well one can only guess... Probably the ghetto talk. Again an issue here: it's too polished, too artificially perfect to add the realistic factor obviously desired by Díaz.

It also struck me that the book had probably been written in three phases with additional layers brought to the plate. It often feels like three stories rather than an integrated novel. Díaz worked on it for 10 years and I can't help to think it was not out of perfectionism or desire to polish everything but rather because he just didn't manage to find his direction. That's at least what it felt like reading it.

Overall, it is, I'm afraid, a case of an author who wanted to do much more than he could deliver.

It's not a bad book, it's just not worthy of the silly praise it received and continues to receive.