The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (8)

I think I get the point of the book.... I think.... I could be completely wrong though, but here's my take on it:

The curse that the book refers to that anyone who hears or says the name of a certain ship captain who (hint) "sailed the ocean blue", I think has to do exactly with the concepts that came along with him. Another website says about him, "He was the original frontiersman who challenged the unknown sea and brought back stories that fired the imagination of a new beginning where all would be possible."

Well, haven't you felt a bit cursed too since you got the history lesson in Elementary school? When you felt you lived in a world with little left to be discovered, but somehow you had to discover SOMETHING? I don't know about you, but I have. It's like the main theme in "The Cheese Monkeys" by Chip Kidd, the human condition means always looking for the next best thing, trying to be the best you can possibly be, not settling for anything less than BETTER. Suddenly, good is never good enough. We live in an age where "Good is dead". Great is the only option. And perhaps it's that same condition that creates the curse. Once we realize good is dead, and we want something more, that we might deserve something more, we will never be able to let that go, never be satisfied until we die.
And as a result, the more people we come in contact with with our "be somebody" mentality, the more we spread the curse to affect them as well. Sorry, reader. I may have cursed you. But Junot did it to me, so blame him. Again, I could be wrong though.

Overall, great book, but I could also see it as the equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting... Only great if you chose to interpret it as something moving. I'd like to think that I took something from it, if not just a new interest in the history of the dominican republic.