Publishing any material criticizing other authors could win me enemies, because best-sellers are often in demand due to the roisterous carousel of fad and fashion. The present essay is a continuation on another article titled Reflections, whereat I advise the reader to be careful with the pernicious literature of our times as essentially nihilistic and excremental.
Of course, it is time to teach our youth to be selective, and as forewarned by A. Schopenhauer, to be on guard against this literary establishment that, for the last decades, has, time and time again, celebrated "the orgies of geniuses" with a flippant contempt for the healthy principles of morality, integrity and character.
The results have been catastrophic, because young people, the millennial, have grown up in an apocalyptic society where literature is no longer promoted for the improvement of the human type. Daily, the loftiest sentiments are buried in the murky world of literature.
Unfortunately, nihilism (que la vida no tiene sentido), has even infiltrated the sacred office of the church's library, and even there one could come across a book, the Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao, whose content, full-fraught with vulgarities, could be said to depict the Dominican people as the outcome of a fuku, an euphemism for "fuck-you."
And this is how the current state of things stand in the world of literature, because our youth, unlike the American people of Norman Rockwell, cannot enjoy the crystalline waters of the Walden Pond by Henry Thoreau.
The American Family by Norman Rockwell:
The results have been catastrophic, because young people, the millennial, have grown up in an apocalyptic society where literature is no longer promoted for the improvement of the human type. Daily, the loftiest sentiments are buried in the murky world of literature.
Unfortunately, nihilism (que la vida no tiene sentido), has even infiltrated the sacred office of the church's library, and even there one could come across a book, the Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao, whose content, full-fraught with vulgarities, could be said to depict the Dominican people as the outcome of a fuku, an euphemism for "fuck-you."
And this is how the current state of things stand in the world of literature, because our youth, unlike the American people of Norman Rockwell, cannot enjoy the crystalline waters of the Walden Pond by Henry Thoreau.
The American Family by Norman Rockwell:
The streamlines of literature have been sullied by a new generation of writers, hacks of success, scribblers, ink-slingers, hellbent on destroying the most sacred feelings of humanity in the elevation of our human nature.
Colombian author Jose Maria Vargas Vila, whose controversial liberal views --and misogynistic attacks on the cult of womanhood in Latin America-- made him the quintessential Satan of the Catholic Church, the Machiavelli of platonic love in some literary circles, was also celebrated for his incomparable prose brushstrokes and caustic genius. El hombre es uno en millones. Vargas Vila is the Nietzsche of Latin America!
Aura o las Violetas - José María Vargas Vila
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XkoEqTuw068
While Vargas' style could be deemed bawdy, lecherous, salacious and sensual, his remarkable creative puissance rarely veers into inferior literary brushstrokes of gross vulgarity. You are fortunate if you can find an English translation of Ibis, or Aura o Las Violetas by the same author. Like Baltasar Gracian, Vargas Vila's prose writings are simply the signature of genius!
Where is Arthur Schopenhauer to translate the genius of Colombia to the American English audience?
Another great writer whose prose-writing and incomparable psychology could well make some current behemoth-writers retreat with terror and dread is Frederick Nietzsche.
When reading Nietzsche in other languages, his writings and multi-layered insights do not lose the vigor, niter and fire of the original German.
Why? Simply because Nietzsche penned down his multi-layered mind with substance! And his thoughts are indeed the loftiest!
Accordingly, Nietzsche's writings cannot be justly appraised alla prima, for like the oak-trees, such thoughts and insights could only take root but only in the right soil and milieu. Consequently, while alive, Nietzsche's Magnus Opus, the Will to Power, was relegated to the shelves of oblivion.
-Profitability may explain the success of some authors in every generation.
On La Marivillosa Vida de Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz en Espanol (The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao)
As a Dominican-born reader, why this book did not receive my approval in the Spanish language?
If you translate this book into the Spanish language, what the author achieves in the keyboard of his English language, is soon revealed to be less effective, nay inadequate, incompatible when the essential, the substance, the kernel and the thought-material can no longer capture the reader whose chief delight is merely on the form, the prose, the oxymoron but not the gist of the subject-matter.
When straddling between two different languages, English and Spanish, one cannot avoid linguistic incompatibilities finding acceptance in the keywords of our concept-sphere and logics, and from such cultural collision and queer awkwardness, there emerges new interesting hybrids, mutations, collisions, oxymoronic cancelations, and sometimes, even utter mutilation of the language is totally acceptable as long as it brings profits...
https://www.onehourtranslation.com/translation/blog/linguistic-equivalence-translation
According to A. Schopenhauer, entire generations of writers could become mentally befuddled and finally crippled by the insidious power of toxic literature (On Judgement and Criticism, etc., Parerga and Paralipomena Volume 2).
19th-Century German Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer Presages the Economics and Ethics of the Web and Modern Publishing – Brain Pickings
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/13/schopenhauer-on-authorship/
Indeed, I could not explain the said prose-writer's genius as always effective when the vehicle of expression, train of thoughts are simply marred or hampered in another language's configuration, but much is lost with translation (John Fiske on the Translation of the Divine Comedy by Dante); and if the writer lacks substance for any moral elevation of the mind, then we better save our brain from frittering away our precious faculties with very recondite literature.
Therefore, when translating the literary work, the behemoth-genius is soon revealed to be a great guest but in his own house USA: outside of the English Language the prose-wizardry of Mr. Diaz cannot thunder to the same flashy effects in the Spanish language.
When Dominican people like me denounce this book as foreign to the great language of Miguel Cervantes or José María Vargas Vila, we are simply speaking on the form and not on the content. But when we further delve into the gist of the niter that thus set the entire American literary world ablaze, we are the more appalled and disappointed by the gross nature of such humor, such free-for-all shit, unworthy of men who call themselves educators in the world of letters.
Salacious Dominican words such as (e.g. toto podrido, culo, ripio, among other extremely vulgar ones) which could have little effects in the mind of an English-speaking decent college-lass, could prove to be very blasphemous for a Dominican reader schooled in the Don Quixote of Miguel Cervantes Saavedra.
The Spanglish of such hacks of success does not hold ground for those versed in the luscious prose and beauty of writers the likes of Henry D. Thoreau, Baltasar Gracian, F. Nietszche, or José María Vargas Vila.
How do we save our youth from the alluvion of nihilism?
Of course, there are the writings whose meaning and gist could not so easily be construed or parsed by a simple cursory preamble, the cohesiveness of the work is inseparable of every other constituent part, especially the finale (e.g. Faust by Goethe is still confined to this category).
What tenuous thread may link Faust Part One and Part Two?
Is it desultory?
Sometimes one simply understands the development of an essay or writing but in relation to every other part and in its entirety, and it is said of some authors (Faust Part 1 and 2 by Goethe) the cohesiveness of such masterwork is to be found but in the ever-recurrent motifs of unsatisfied longings, the dynamics of unfulfilled hankerings and dissatisfaction with life,followed by the prickly stings of desire and ennui (A. Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy)
These are the watchwords, i. e., dissatisfaction, desires, ennui, to understanding Faust, but the thematic sequel, as observed by some critics, is definitely lost in Faust Part 2, hence why this work is often read like aphoristic insights, maxims, reflections, poetry.
******************************
In this essay I would like touch upon my high regards for Dominican writer Junot Diaz
When I first heard the news that a writer of the caliber of Junot Diaz has been crowned with the laurels of genius, I felt proud of my brother, and many Dominican compatriots, spread the good tidings --a triumphant feat-- in the literary claques and cliques dominating the prestigious institutions of USA.
From this perspective, one must concede a revolution in the World of Literature in the United States of America for the promotion of multiculturalism, education, the flower of culture and aesthetics as the greatest moral forces for social justice and humanities.
Nevertheless, while immersed in the Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, I was soon aware that what the writer achieved in the promotion of culture and social justice for people of color, could not tally the prodigious reservoir of Oscar Wow's prolific mind to spinning corrosive tales as vulgar as they are offensive in the Spanish Language --especially to people of Dominican descent.
My admiration for Junot Diaz is a literary one, but as a Dominican born person, I cannot sympathize with an impudent man who has thus resorted to the defamation of his own people --the selling or bribing of his primogeniture and birthright-- in exchange for mundane glory as accorded by those who may relish in the "avant-garde literature of scurrilousness and nihilism."
As much as I admire his prose-writings, I cannot sympathize with his bawdy abuse of the English language, and would say that the author, however a gifted writer, has done a wonderful job to presenting the Dominican people with little regards to Juan Pablo Duarte, Sanchez y Mella (founders of the Dominican Republic), and I don't think they would be happy with Mr. Diaz.
Colombian author Jose Maria Vargas Vila, whose controversial liberal views --and misogynistic attacks on the cult of womanhood in Latin America-- made him the quintessential Satan of the Catholic Church, the Machiavelli of platonic love in some literary circles, was also celebrated for his incomparable prose brushstrokes and caustic genius. El hombre es uno en millones. Vargas Vila is the Nietzsche of Latin America!
Aura o las Violetas - José María Vargas Vila
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XkoEqTuw068
While Vargas' style could be deemed bawdy, lecherous, salacious and sensual, his remarkable creative puissance rarely veers into inferior literary brushstrokes of gross vulgarity. You are fortunate if you can find an English translation of Ibis, or Aura o Las Violetas by the same author. Like Baltasar Gracian, Vargas Vila's prose writings are simply the signature of genius!
Where is Arthur Schopenhauer to translate the genius of Colombia to the American English audience?
Another great writer whose prose-writing and incomparable psychology could well make some current behemoth-writers retreat with terror and dread is Frederick Nietzsche.
When reading Nietzsche in other languages, his writings and multi-layered insights do not lose the vigor, niter and fire of the original German.
Why? Simply because Nietzsche penned down his multi-layered mind with substance! And his thoughts are indeed the loftiest!
Accordingly, Nietzsche's writings cannot be justly appraised alla prima, for like the oak-trees, such thoughts and insights could only take root but only in the right soil and milieu. Consequently, while alive, Nietzsche's Magnus Opus, the Will to Power, was relegated to the shelves of oblivion.
-Profitability may explain the success of some authors in every generation.
On La Marivillosa Vida de Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz en Espanol (The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao)
As a Dominican-born reader, why this book did not receive my approval in the Spanish language?
If you translate this book into the Spanish language, what the author achieves in the keyboard of his English language, is soon revealed to be less effective, nay inadequate, incompatible when the essential, the substance, the kernel and the thought-material can no longer capture the reader whose chief delight is merely on the form, the prose, the oxymoron but not the gist of the subject-matter.
When straddling between two different languages, English and Spanish, one cannot avoid linguistic incompatibilities finding acceptance in the keywords of our concept-sphere and logics, and from such cultural collision and queer awkwardness, there emerges new interesting hybrids, mutations, collisions, oxymoronic cancelations, and sometimes, even utter mutilation of the language is totally acceptable as long as it brings profits...
https://www.onehourtranslation.com/translation/blog/linguistic-equivalence-translation
According to A. Schopenhauer, entire generations of writers could become mentally befuddled and finally crippled by the insidious power of toxic literature (On Judgement and Criticism, etc., Parerga and Paralipomena Volume 2).
19th-Century German Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer Presages the Economics and Ethics of the Web and Modern Publishing – Brain Pickings
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/13/schopenhauer-on-authorship/
Indeed, I could not explain the said prose-writer's genius as always effective when the vehicle of expression, train of thoughts are simply marred or hampered in another language's configuration, but much is lost with translation (John Fiske on the Translation of the Divine Comedy by Dante); and if the writer lacks substance for any moral elevation of the mind, then we better save our brain from frittering away our precious faculties with very recondite literature.
Therefore, when translating the literary work, the behemoth-genius is soon revealed to be a great guest but in his own house USA: outside of the English Language the prose-wizardry of Mr. Diaz cannot thunder to the same flashy effects in the Spanish language.
When Dominican people like me denounce this book as foreign to the great language of Miguel Cervantes or José María Vargas Vila, we are simply speaking on the form and not on the content. But when we further delve into the gist of the niter that thus set the entire American literary world ablaze, we are the more appalled and disappointed by the gross nature of such humor, such free-for-all shit, unworthy of men who call themselves educators in the world of letters.
Salacious Dominican words such as (e.g. toto podrido, culo, ripio, among other extremely vulgar ones) which could have little effects in the mind of an English-speaking decent college-lass, could prove to be very blasphemous for a Dominican reader schooled in the Don Quixote of Miguel Cervantes Saavedra.
The Spanglish of such hacks of success does not hold ground for those versed in the luscious prose and beauty of writers the likes of Henry D. Thoreau, Baltasar Gracian, F. Nietszche, or José María Vargas Vila.
How do we save our youth from the alluvion of nihilism?
Of course, there are the writings whose meaning and gist could not so easily be construed or parsed by a simple cursory preamble, the cohesiveness of the work is inseparable of every other constituent part, especially the finale (e.g. Faust by Goethe is still confined to this category).
What tenuous thread may link Faust Part One and Part Two?
Is it desultory?
Sometimes one simply understands the development of an essay or writing but in relation to every other part and in its entirety, and it is said of some authors (Faust Part 1 and 2 by Goethe) the cohesiveness of such masterwork is to be found but in the ever-recurrent motifs of unsatisfied longings, the dynamics of unfulfilled hankerings and dissatisfaction with life,followed by the prickly stings of desire and ennui (A. Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy)
These are the watchwords, i. e., dissatisfaction, desires, ennui, to understanding Faust, but the thematic sequel, as observed by some critics, is definitely lost in Faust Part 2, hence why this work is often read like aphoristic insights, maxims, reflections, poetry.
******************************
In this essay I would like touch upon my high regards for Dominican writer Junot Diaz
When I first heard the news that a writer of the caliber of Junot Diaz has been crowned with the laurels of genius, I felt proud of my brother, and many Dominican compatriots, spread the good tidings --a triumphant feat-- in the literary claques and cliques dominating the prestigious institutions of USA.
From this perspective, one must concede a revolution in the World of Literature in the United States of America for the promotion of multiculturalism, education, the flower of culture and aesthetics as the greatest moral forces for social justice and humanities.
Nevertheless, while immersed in the Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, I was soon aware that what the writer achieved in the promotion of culture and social justice for people of color, could not tally the prodigious reservoir of Oscar Wow's prolific mind to spinning corrosive tales as vulgar as they are offensive in the Spanish Language --especially to people of Dominican descent.
My admiration for Junot Diaz is a literary one, but as a Dominican born person, I cannot sympathize with an impudent man who has thus resorted to the defamation of his own people --the selling or bribing of his primogeniture and birthright-- in exchange for mundane glory as accorded by those who may relish in the "avant-garde literature of scurrilousness and nihilism."
As much as I admire his prose-writings, I cannot sympathize with his bawdy abuse of the English language, and would say that the author, however a gifted writer, has done a wonderful job to presenting the Dominican people with little regards to Juan Pablo Duarte, Sanchez y Mella (founders of the Dominican Republic), and I don't think they would be happy with Mr. Diaz.
La Vida Marvillosa de Oscar Wao, por el escritor Dominicano Junot Diaz, me parece un obra genial y maestra! Junot Diaz, no hay duda, y esto a pesar de los muchos detractores de este humilde genio Dominicano, es un tremendo talento!
His caustic prose is just fueled with fire, wit and poetic distinction.
Diría que en La Segunda Parte (II) de esta controversial obra, mi hermano en patria, Junot Díaz, demuestra tener el ferviente fuego de un gran escritor.
That said, one can only wish that the whole “shit--thing” could have been expressed in such elevated and dignified style.
And it is here where one stumbles upon a most remarkable "Dominican sancocho" of intelectual incongruities and wit, a "mottled hotchpotch" of disparate things expressed in a literary style that is for the most part vulgar and bawdy.
Nevertheless, this hybrid monstrous masterpiece, (which could easily collide the nadir and the acme in the hellish of genius) is not wanting of every single motley element which could provoke, alternately, irresistible abhorrence mixed with reluctant admiration. Therefore, we have to admit that Mr. Junot Diaz' oxymoronic devices are indeed fired with genius and originality.
The work is reprehensible as it is also fascinating to an incomprehensible extent, but sometimes we are tasked to plod through a veritable alluvion of basest things expressed in a vulgar style.
Of course, I am not denying Mr. Diaz a surprising depth of "Goethean immeasurableness" in the non-spatial twilight of our existence, but I wish the great writer could have kept his poetic flight without veering away into some tasteless profanity and vulgarity. Luckily, this Dominican sancocho is held together by the backbones of sex, race and violence.
It is easier to contrive one thousand fucku-stories plagiarized from local newspapers than to soar with little digression into the heaven of writers the likes of Henry D. Thoreau, F. Nietzsche or Arthur Schopenhauer.
Unquestionably, there is indeed genius in a man who has neither qualms, nor scruples, to speaking thus of sex and race in such scandalous head-scratching literary style.
Where is the niter to set the whole shit-thing ablaze?
And here Los Gringos of post-America, have found their favorite genius who could thus speak so openly and unreservedly on the color of a black skin in the Dominican Republic. From the color-line perspective, the historic parallels between the Dominican Republic and USA are simply striking!
Therefore, perhaps I was too quick to praising Junot Diaz for his fire-prose writing and thematic development --the true mark of genius. El final es un poco unintelligible, and lengthy to Hegelian proportion. I would deem the whole thing as a comedy, albeit a tragic one… for Junot Diaz, Pulitzer-award winner, while praised by Los Gringos, "un genio," may have brought out the worst of the Dominican people.
*This Is How You Lose La Hispaniola*
As I start reading this book at Barnes and Noble, and I have to confess rarely encountering something more vulgar, filthy and detrimental to the true goal
of any great writer, Oscar Wow once again charges with all the literary wiles of obscenity, vulgarity and sensuality.
The hybrid-book, which for sure would bring profitable gains due to its sexually-fueled content, seems to have been concocted in the cesspool of our traumatic latrines in a Latin America still beset with the demons of benighted colonialism...
Compare this hellish book with F. Nietzsche's volcanic master work "The Will to Power"...and you will understand me; and yet, while alive, Nietzsche, like Thoreau, could not find an audience for his books!
The greatest books are left unread in the shelves of America...America the Beautiful I Cannot Recognize Thee.
His caustic prose is just fueled with fire, wit and poetic distinction.
Diría que en La Segunda Parte (II) de esta controversial obra, mi hermano en patria, Junot Díaz, demuestra tener el ferviente fuego de un gran escritor.
That said, one can only wish that the whole “shit--thing” could have been expressed in such elevated and dignified style.
And it is here where one stumbles upon a most remarkable "Dominican sancocho" of intelectual incongruities and wit, a "mottled hotchpotch" of disparate things expressed in a literary style that is for the most part vulgar and bawdy.
Nevertheless, this hybrid monstrous masterpiece, (which could easily collide the nadir and the acme in the hellish of genius) is not wanting of every single motley element which could provoke, alternately, irresistible abhorrence mixed with reluctant admiration. Therefore, we have to admit that Mr. Junot Diaz' oxymoronic devices are indeed fired with genius and originality.
The work is reprehensible as it is also fascinating to an incomprehensible extent, but sometimes we are tasked to plod through a veritable alluvion of basest things expressed in a vulgar style.
Of course, I am not denying Mr. Diaz a surprising depth of "Goethean immeasurableness" in the non-spatial twilight of our existence, but I wish the great writer could have kept his poetic flight without veering away into some tasteless profanity and vulgarity. Luckily, this Dominican sancocho is held together by the backbones of sex, race and violence.
It is easier to contrive one thousand fucku-stories plagiarized from local newspapers than to soar with little digression into the heaven of writers the likes of Henry D. Thoreau, F. Nietzsche or Arthur Schopenhauer.
Unquestionably, there is indeed genius in a man who has neither qualms, nor scruples, to speaking thus of sex and race in such scandalous head-scratching literary style.
Where is the niter to set the whole shit-thing ablaze?
And here Los Gringos of post-America, have found their favorite genius who could thus speak so openly and unreservedly on the color of a black skin in the Dominican Republic. From the color-line perspective, the historic parallels between the Dominican Republic and USA are simply striking!
Therefore, perhaps I was too quick to praising Junot Diaz for his fire-prose writing and thematic development --the true mark of genius. El final es un poco unintelligible, and lengthy to Hegelian proportion. I would deem the whole thing as a comedy, albeit a tragic one… for Junot Diaz, Pulitzer-award winner, while praised by Los Gringos, "un genio," may have brought out the worst of the Dominican people.
*This Is How You Lose La Hispaniola*
As I start reading this book at Barnes and Noble, and I have to confess rarely encountering something more vulgar, filthy and detrimental to the true goal
of any great writer, Oscar Wow once again charges with all the literary wiles of obscenity, vulgarity and sensuality.
The hybrid-book, which for sure would bring profitable gains due to its sexually-fueled content, seems to have been concocted in the cesspool of our traumatic latrines in a Latin America still beset with the demons of benighted colonialism...
Compare this hellish book with F. Nietzsche's volcanic master work "The Will to Power"...and you will understand me; and yet, while alive, Nietzsche, like Thoreau, could not find an audience for his books!
The greatest books are left unread in the shelves of America...America the Beautiful I Cannot Recognize Thee.
Once again, we are appalled at how things are ejaculated in the literary world of geniuses in America.
Of course, secretly, this well-educated audience may have found a writer whose genius is to stir-up a formidable surge of bilirubin. Indeed, ours is a society traumatized by the legal imps of sexual harassments and lawsuits, and to express oneself so bawdily would require, undoubtedly, not only talent but also courage, but also a community of writers and readers striking kindred thereof.
And so, this brilliant writer is the devil of nihilism in a society which has finally become suicidal and apocalyptic.
It is just incredible how little respect for anything noble, honorable and sacred...our generation of writers reminds me the wincing monkeys in the Witch's Kitchen (Goethe, Faust Part 1).
Of course, such salacious stuff would find a sure public out there --let them have their potion to their heart's content. If we wish to corroborate Jose Ortega y Gasset's observations (The Revolt of the Masses) on the current state of thing for the intellectually crippled society of post-American, one would read the new generation of writers and hacks of quick success today, and how they shock-and-awe with their ever-present unfetchingly
bombastic high-flown jargon full of obscenities and vulgarities.
We may substitute the despicable word shit for swills, and we would perhaps show some modicum of respectability for the language of John Milton.
The great merit of such book is that it would task us to seek the help of an Oxford Thesaurus Dictionay!
I just cant believe we have reached such low a nadir --pit-decadence in the America of Obama-- to allowing our beautiful youth to be fed-up and finally traumatized on such nauseous hotch-potch oozing forth from the bowels of USA and the Dominican Republic.
And so we would conclude that USA is very tolerant to admitting some people to be called geniuses....great minds!
Of course, Mr. Junot, undoubtedly, has great talent for prose-writing, but how can a great writer debase us with bawdiness and fucku-stories so unworthy of great writers?
For my part, I am not interested to finding audience in a world incapable to enjoying Mozart or Goethe's Faust. Agreeing with Australian philosopher David Stove, Everything Goes, I am very pleased but only reading the great writers of yesteryears. For, even Goethe, who was such great writer, had already expressed this view: that so many writers have written before him, and that there is nothing new under the sun.
Furthermore, I could take the Daily News and jot down a long list of Fuku-stories, because, with such writers and thinkers, we are to remain forever "manacled" in the Pit of Hell. But the flight of ascension to a Bravo-Finale may require the fine mind of a true genius! And here, unfortunately, we are wretchedly left in the cesspool of our times...
Junot Diaz may remind me of a Moorish polymath, and his Magnus Opus, the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, may hint at the Tragedy of Othello for pursuing a saucy white chic among the upper-crusty Britons of Shakespeare. In some ways, we cannot win the white chic's favor without some treason to our beloved homelands and ancestry.
Again, the issue of race is the incendiary niter in the bosky wild woods of humanity. From another psychological perspective, Oscar Wao is the new child of America!
And so, like the Othello of Shakespeare, in a unparalleled feat of remarkable literary triumph --even through the abuse of sexually explicit language and content-- my inspiring Brown man Oscar Wao has embarked on a most arduous perilous task: to prove that he deserves an honorable seat next to Henry D. Thoreau, Mark Twain, and Ralph Emerson.
That a man of mixed background could write so well may be breaking-news in USA. But keep in mind, were not the Persians, the Sumerians, the Mayan a people of mixed ancestors and great pyramids?
Great divine literature once flowed from the now parched lands of Egypt, Ethiopia and India. We read Homer, and wonder, Wow! what a divine writer! But in all likelihood, Homer probably read and nurtured his poetic impetus from the ancient literary rivers of Sumer and Egypt.
Of course, secretly, this well-educated audience may have found a writer whose genius is to stir-up a formidable surge of bilirubin. Indeed, ours is a society traumatized by the legal imps of sexual harassments and lawsuits, and to express oneself so bawdily would require, undoubtedly, not only talent but also courage, but also a community of writers and readers striking kindred thereof.
And so, this brilliant writer is the devil of nihilism in a society which has finally become suicidal and apocalyptic.
It is just incredible how little respect for anything noble, honorable and sacred...our generation of writers reminds me the wincing monkeys in the Witch's Kitchen (Goethe, Faust Part 1).
Of course, such salacious stuff would find a sure public out there --let them have their potion to their heart's content. If we wish to corroborate Jose Ortega y Gasset's observations (The Revolt of the Masses) on the current state of thing for the intellectually crippled society of post-American, one would read the new generation of writers and hacks of quick success today, and how they shock-and-awe with their ever-present unfetchingly
bombastic high-flown jargon full of obscenities and vulgarities.
We may substitute the despicable word shit for swills, and we would perhaps show some modicum of respectability for the language of John Milton.
The great merit of such book is that it would task us to seek the help of an Oxford Thesaurus Dictionay!
I just cant believe we have reached such low a nadir --pit-decadence in the America of Obama-- to allowing our beautiful youth to be fed-up and finally traumatized on such nauseous hotch-potch oozing forth from the bowels of USA and the Dominican Republic.
And so we would conclude that USA is very tolerant to admitting some people to be called geniuses....great minds!
Of course, Mr. Junot, undoubtedly, has great talent for prose-writing, but how can a great writer debase us with bawdiness and fucku-stories so unworthy of great writers?
For my part, I am not interested to finding audience in a world incapable to enjoying Mozart or Goethe's Faust. Agreeing with Australian philosopher David Stove, Everything Goes, I am very pleased but only reading the great writers of yesteryears. For, even Goethe, who was such great writer, had already expressed this view: that so many writers have written before him, and that there is nothing new under the sun.
Furthermore, I could take the Daily News and jot down a long list of Fuku-stories, because, with such writers and thinkers, we are to remain forever "manacled" in the Pit of Hell. But the flight of ascension to a Bravo-Finale may require the fine mind of a true genius! And here, unfortunately, we are wretchedly left in the cesspool of our times...
Junot Diaz may remind me of a Moorish polymath, and his Magnus Opus, the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, may hint at the Tragedy of Othello for pursuing a saucy white chic among the upper-crusty Britons of Shakespeare. In some ways, we cannot win the white chic's favor without some treason to our beloved homelands and ancestry.
Again, the issue of race is the incendiary niter in the bosky wild woods of humanity. From another psychological perspective, Oscar Wao is the new child of America!
And so, like the Othello of Shakespeare, in a unparalleled feat of remarkable literary triumph --even through the abuse of sexually explicit language and content-- my inspiring Brown man Oscar Wao has embarked on a most arduous perilous task: to prove that he deserves an honorable seat next to Henry D. Thoreau, Mark Twain, and Ralph Emerson.
That a man of mixed background could write so well may be breaking-news in USA. But keep in mind, were not the Persians, the Sumerians, the Mayan a people of mixed ancestors and great pyramids?
Great divine literature once flowed from the now parched lands of Egypt, Ethiopia and India. We read Homer, and wonder, Wow! what a divine writer! But in all likelihood, Homer probably read and nurtured his poetic impetus from the ancient literary rivers of Sumer and Egypt.