clayhornik | (no subject)

So, we got an advance copy of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz a while back. It stayed in the big stack for a while until this weekend when two things happened: first, a young lady came in all excited to get a copy. Then I read something Nick Mamatas wrote about it, regarding the epigram, a quote from the Fantastic Four.
That was actually the selling point for me.
Well... it's well written. He sure writes purty.

But...

It's peppered, no, loaded with comicbook references. I know Lenthem did the same thing with Fortress of Solitude, but somehow it wasn't as intrusive. It starts with the epigram, "Of what import are brief, nameless lives... to Galactus?".
Then the main character, narrating the history of a curse he feels he's under, called the fuku, lets the reader know "Be assured: Like Darkseid's Omega Effect, no matter how many turns and digressions this shit might take, it always- and I mean always- gets its man."
Sure, I know who Darkseid is. But there are more- plenty more. The Watcher. The Blue Area of the Moon. Even more obscure stuff like Alan Moore's Miracle Man.
I get these things, but will the average reader, someone who picks it up because it got a good write up somewhere.
I'm not sure what his point is with all this.
Is it a literary novel for nerds?
Or some attempt to merge literary allusion and pop culture?
Either way, it was annoying.
It's been a while since I've picked up a book and not been able to finish it, but I had to put The Brief Wondrous Life... down, and I don't expect to pick it up anytime too soon.
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This is the first Wednesday in about a month I've not spent with my mom or nephews. I hope they're enjoying school.
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I haven't mentioned this before, because I feel a little guilty about it. My parents recently got laptops, one for each of them... and my mom gave me hers.
It's sweet.
So sweet.
It can handle, as I've babbled about the last couple of days, Second Life.
I'm still tweaking it to my needs, but I don't want to get too tweak happy since, honestly I'm not sure I can keep it. I feel bad about taking it away from her even though she gave it to me.
So I've posting this through the livejournal site rather than with a program.
I need a program so I can do things like provide links so when I make reference to Darkseid or The Blue Area of the Moon, I can provide context, since I'm pretty sure there are a couple of people who read this thing who are saying "what? what language is he jabbering in?"
(For the record, it's Nerdish, a dialect of Geek).