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"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz

Martha

What did you think of her?

It's so interesting to me how her dad's job took her overseas briefly but that the experience completely determined the course of her life. I guess it's silly to think about how someone's life could have been different but for this event or that event, but it's so tempting with her. Her being in Berlin at that particular point in time was so decisive in her life, when she might easily have decided (as a grown woman) to not accompany her parents ...

Nazi goofs

I admittedly haven't read a lot about the Nazis, but this is the first thing I've read that has shown just how bumbling and juvenile and egotistical they were. I mean, you see Hitler in film footage carrying on like a buffoon, but everyone around him seems so smitten and serious (when in fact he is so laughable ... his contemporaries could have laughed him off the stage, but we can't laugh at his laughability because we know how the story ends). The focus always seems to be on the sinister, on this united wall of Aryan determination. In Larson's book, you see the Nazis as petty, in-fighting, not terribly bright individuals plagued with paranoia and various delusions of personal grandeur. That was very interesting to me, in light of so many depictions of them as simply cold, calculating "evil geniuses."

And it's interesting to think about how, if you were thrown into that society in the capacity of a diplomat, you would interact with these people as individuals.

Ambassador Dodd

One of the things I really liked about this book is how Larson portrayed his subjects, the Dodds, as human beings with flaws and weaknesses — individuals who were caught up in an historic moment and reacted to it like human beings, frequently with self-interest and denial, sometimes with courage and honor. It was interesting to see how they navigated that world that they so strangely found themselves enmeshed in. Dodd's progression from naive and aloof and doubting to outspoken and belatedly involved was particularly compelling to me. Do you think he was a good ambassador in the scheme of things?

Staying out of it

A question I always had regarding Hitler was how did the United States let this happen. It's not like he suddenly came to power and wreaked unsuspected havoc in Europe. His ascension was years in the making and his goals of conquest and genocide were fairly transparent. I had always heard the stuff about the U.S. being war-shy after WWI and the whole isolationist vs. interventionist argument, but Larson's account of our diplomatic relations with Germany is the first time I really had a firm grasp of precisely how the U.S. let this happen, including a horrifying and cowardly indifference to the fate of Europe's Jews. Not really a question. Just an observation, if you have thoughts.