Of what import are brief, nameless lives...to Galactus?

A novel which uses the quotation in the title of this blog post as an epigraph cannot fail to be worth reading.  And if you know the source of that epigraph, then you should most certainly read the book discussed below.  However, if that epigraph means nothing to you, then a) I feel really sorry for you, and  b) you are obviously not a complete nerd.

(And to relieve the curiosity of those whose nerd-quotient is rather low, the quotation is from Fantastic Four (no. 49, to be precise), but if you at least knew it was from the Marvel Universe, then that is close enough.)

The book:

Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The single most amazing thing about the book:  it is full (and I mean full) of references which only the truly nerdy will get and it won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 

I read the book after it was strongly recommended to me (by Mallory Cohn (who is equally conversant in matters of high literature and nerdiness (prior to this recommendation, she was the source of my inspiration to read both Dickens' Our Mutual Friend and Gaiman's The Sandman (and now with the success of Oscar Wao, she has entered the "If Mallory says it is worth reading, then it is worth reading" category)))--who even wrote the title on a piece of paper and handed it to me so that I would not forget the title).

The basic story is an intergenerational tale of a family from the Dominican Republic whose later generations migrate to the United States.  It has quite a bit about the politics of the Dominican Republic in it and a hint of  Latin American magical realism going on (just a hint; it isn't overdone--there is a curse on the family (well, maybe it is a curse--that is sort of the point)).  Just on those grounds, the story is pretty good, the writing style is nice, and the book may be worth reading.

But, the thing that elevates the book far above its natural genre is the nerdiness factor.  Consider:
1) a government official in the Dominican Republic (whose dictator is a rather evil, brutish thug) is described as being not exactly a ringwraith, but not exactly an orc either;
2) Oscar (who is the nerd in the story) uses the pick-up line on a girl he just met that if she was in his game, he would give her an 18 charisma;
3) Oscar is at one point described as being so distracted that he loses interest in the last few issues of The Watchmen as they come out.

Now here is the great thing about those things--they aren't explained at all in the novel.  Either you get them or you don't.  If you get them, they are all pretty funny.  And the novel has a constant stream of references just like those.

Anyway, there isn't much more that needs to be said--this is probably the best literary novel for nerds I have ever read.  I seriously doubt it is Great Book territory, but it is certainly a novel I was very happy to read.