Otakuness: a geek history
Shakespeare&Co cat.jpg, originally uploaded by 160507.
There are times when you pick up a book and you get a shock of pure recognition. You don’t know the author, the author doesn’t know you, but you see yourself so clearly in that book, you could’ve been looking in a mirror. It’s not an obvious resemblance, but you know it on a molecular level. You can’t tell other people because they’ll think you’re corny or stupid, and this is important to you. It becomes a personal mantra: I am Wart. I am Holden Caulfield. I am Jane Eyre or Lizzie Bennett or Eustacia Vye. I am the Kwisatz Haderach.
This is one of those times. The protagonist of Junot Diaz’s first novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is the son of Dominican immigrants growing up in Paterson, NJ in the 1980s. It nails the geek experience and drives it home. And I’ve only read the first two chapters.
“Oscar had always been a young nerd—the kind of kid who read Tom Swift, who loved comic books and watched Ultraman—but by high school his commitment to the Genres had become absolute. . .he was gorging himself on a steady stream of Lovecraft, Wells, Burroughs, Howard, Alexander, Herbert, Asimov, Bova, and Heinlein, and even the Old Ones who were already beginning to fade—E.E. “Doc” Smith, Stapledon, and the guy who wrote all the Doc Savage books. . .You couldn’t have torn him away from any movie or TV show or cartoon where there were monsters or spaceships or mutants or doomsday devices or destinies or magic or evil villains. . .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 game fanatic. . .Perhaps if like me he’d been able to hide his otakuness maybe shit would have been easier for him, but he couldn’t. Dude wore his nerdiness like a Jedi wore his light saber or a Lensman her lens. Couldn’t have passed for Normal if he wanted to.”
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
March 25th, 2008 at 09:53
Yes, yes, that’s true. I remember when I first read John Irving’s The World According to Garp. Back then, I still harbored illusions of being a writer, and I emphatized with Garp so much, I even made my girlfriend then to read it. I thought she would have at least a glimmer of what makes me tick. She thought I was weird.
Another book which has a protagonist I identify with was (don’t say eeuuww, ok?) Richard Bach’s Bridge Across Forever. I gave that book to a girl I used to go out with.
I am now with somebody I didn’t give a book to.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:25
I thought I would enjoy T. H. White’s The Once and Future King because of Merlin. Also, I used to hate Launcelot – I read some versions of the Arthurian legend (and saw the Richard Gere Launcelot movie) and found him a philandering macho man. I was steeling myself to hate him and Guinevere.
But when I discovered T. H. White’s ugly, insecure Launcelot du Lac, the realization hit me in the face: I was the guy. I sympathized with his motivations of being the champion, that I think it explained why I want to do things in a certain way. I don’t know if it’s a good thing, but it surely cleared things up for me.
March 25th, 2008 at 14:54
I always thought that I’m pretty much the same with Holden Caulfield, but then again, same thing goes with alot of people who read the book.
March 26th, 2008 at 07:38
I am Tyler Durden.
March 26th, 2008 at 17:42
True. I’m fairly surprised that other people out there can find some sort of similarity with not one, but many, literary characters. I was delighted when I read this blog entry. Some characters I think I can identify with are Holden’s younger sister Phoebe, and (I am appalled by my audacity) Lizzy Bennett. Not entirely, just little snippets of their personalities are similar with mine. Again, it’s not an obvious resemblance, but I know it on a molecular level.
September 29th, 2008 at 12:19
Just reading back through some of your old posts. A few months ago, I saw Junot Diaz in a forum with Jose Dalisay at the Sydney Writers Festival. I actually just went along to meet Jose Dalisay and get his autograph on a book, but when I heard Junot Diaz speaking about his writing, I immediately went and bought The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. It’s a great book.