Literary Allusions
Comic books, science-fiction, and fantasy literature all play an important role in Oscar's upbringing and identity, and each is incorporated into the novel to reflect the world he lives in. Diaz has said that to dismiss the novel's reflexivity with fiction and fantasy is to do to the novel "exactly what Oscar suffered from, which is that...Oscar’s interests, his views of the world, were dismissed as illegitimate, as unimportant, as make-believe", and that the novel asks the reader "to take not only Oscar seriously but his interests seriously."
Read more about this topic: The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao
Famous quotes containing the word literary:
“Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as “spectacles” to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions.... The learned are mere literary drudges.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)