Dragon Ball Z Uncensored

[Action Hank]

Oh. Yeah. I forgot about that! That has to be a typo. Then again, the story is told by Yunior. Perhaps it was purposefully done? Normally he was pretty on the shit I knew.

[Theldorrin]

Oh, I thought your issue would be in him being a dubbie.

[Yogurtman]

No, this is in the early 80s, of course he's a dubbie. I'm not even sure if fansubs existed yet.

[RPtotheMax]

You could say using the wrong name did 4d10 damage to the book's credibility...

[Action Hank]

My first question:

Do you think Oscar Wao was a great book, deserving of a Pulitzer Prize? If so, what about it makes it great?



While I enjoyed the book, it never once occurred to me as great. I haven't read a lot of contemporary fiction, and don't know what type of competition it faced in 2007 for the Pulitzer, so perhaps it was the best of the year. But I don't know if it is the type of book I would look back upon and ponder about---as I do with The Life of Pi. I wonder how much that has to do with how little I know about the Dominican Republic, or the structure of the story itself. I think it failed to achieve greatness in its Third Act. Something about the final part of the book---perhaps it's short length---left it feeling different from the rest of the book.

Or maybe it was because it had jumped between too many characters, never seeming to spend just enough time on each.

I was left looking and expecting more. This book could have, and in my opinion, should have been longer. Expanding and tying in the family history even more than it did.

I could be wrong, so please, prove me otherwise.

[Mike Dunn]

I didn't read this book, but the one thing about the Dominican Republic that has always been interesting to me is that they are statistically the most unhappy nation in the world.

[cloacal kiss]

To be fair there's probably plenty of places in Africa where the survey-taker commits suicide before he can do a meaningful statistical analysis of the country's misery.

[Action Hank]

There are several really good books about African misery: The Life & Times of Michael K, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Things Fall Apart.

[Mike Dunn]

Sorry, I must have heard that from dubious sources. Tanzania is the least happy country, the Dominican Republic is closer to the middle range of happiness.

http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/hap_nat/nat_fp.php

[cloacal kiss]

Your mom was a dubious source when she got drunk and got up on the bar and said "I'M NOT A GIANT SLUT" but then she told the truth when she stood in front of the door and said "NOBODY LEAVES HERE WITHOUT ME SUCKING ON THEIR DICK"

[My Head Hurts 90]

I'm going to agree with Ace on the this book.

It was alright: somewhat enjoyable, competently written, evenly paced. However, outside of the use of Spanglish and the nerdom, I don't think there's too much that's remarkable about this book. Your main protagonist is a giant fucking fatass nerd and his life is about what you'd expect it to amount to. The side stories were pretty interesting, if only to see how insane the Dominican Republic was.

Then again, I've probably read about 10 different books about immigration, multiculturalism and colonialism/imperialism over the past few years so maybe this wasn't as interesting to me as it was to other people.

It took me awhile to stop getting annoyed with the writing style. It just came off as like he was trying to make it sound as "ethnic" as possible.

[Yogurtman]

Yeah, I could have done without some of the ethnic dialogue, but then I don't know Spanish.

The nerd stuff was captured extremely well and I enjoyed that. Overall, though, I agree with the general opinion that this book was good but not great.

On the other hand, the discussion of it in Vinny's thread prompted me to re-read One Hundred Years of Solitude, and yeah. Latin America is powerful.

[Vinny]

I haven't finished the book yet, but I'm leaning towards the majority opinion. It's certainly enjoyable, but the plot is fairly predictable. The book is funny, but I really hate it when authors go out of their way to tell a joke. This guy uses lots of italics for the funniest emphasis and line breaks for punchlines.

I was making good progress today but reading about Beli's (or whatever) massive tits for so long forced me to stop and jerk off.
_________________

[Action Hank]

Another thing is the author's use of footnotes. While I liked the information he shared, it seemed too much like a cheap device. Like he was trying to be Nabokov.

Still, Trujillo is pretty awesome. The best of the stories, I thought, was young Beli, followed by the story of her parents. I think the quality and depth of tragedy of those sections undermined the Oscar story. I get what he was trying to do, but again, I wish he spent more time on Oscar---especially his last two trips to the DR.

[My Head Hurts 90]

Well, I think part of the reason the book lightens up at the end is that Oscar is dead and Yunior doesn't have a whole lot to go on.

To get back to the Pullitzer thing, it does depend a lot on the year. A Death in the Family won and that is an awful, awful book. It's also been given to two of Updike's mediocre Rabbit novels.

[8 bit orgy]

Has anyone had any actual success publishing anything?

[MADali]

This book sucked. None of the characters were people I wanted to know that much about. Oscar was an awful person and there was nothing even remotely positive about him for me to really care about reading his life. Almost everyone's life in FTU would be more interesting to read about if it was published. And none of the family members were really that interesting either, and all the bad things happened to them was because of their stupidity.

And I can not stand it when authors suddenly insert non-English phrases in their English books. Thats fucking moronic. Either right in English or Spanish. I can understand putting a word here or there when it is difficult to translate or when everyone is talking in English and suddenly one character talks in a different language. But not when the asshole author writes, "And then he said the famous last words, *fucking spanish*"

[My Head Hurts 90]

*posts Madali's pp*

[My Head Hurts 90]

I like how Madali considers trying to protect your daughter from being raped stupid.

[MADali]

Yeah, he protected her by doing nothing.