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- Title
Preternatural Narration and the Lens of Genre Fiction in Junot Díaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao."
- Authors
Miller, T. S.
- Abstract
This essay examines the relationship between Junot Díaz's 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" and the genres of science fiction and fantasy, which number among this decidedly mainstream novel's most important subjects. In the end, "Oscar Wao's" greatest debt to genre fiction lies not in the narrator's presentation of ambiguously supernatural explanations for certain plot events, but in his incessant use of metaphors from sf—such as the Watcher and the Lensman—to describe and understand his own position as narrator-author of the sprawling family saga he relates. The ubiquity and complexity of other genre allusions in the novel prove them to be more than throwaway pop-culture references, testifying to the narrator's deep engagement with the genre as a legitimate "lens" by which to understand human experience. The essay concludes with an attempt to situate this perspective on science fiction in relation to the current trends within the genre, with particular reference to other contemporary "literary" authors such as Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem.
- Subjects
ESSAYS; BRIEF Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The (Book); DIAZ, Junot, 1968-; SCIENCE fiction; AMERICAN fantasy fiction; FICTION genres
- Publication
Science Fiction Studies, 2011, Vol 38, Issue 1, p92
- ISSN
0091-7729
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.5621/sciefictstud.38.1.0092