brief, wondrous

I'm reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Almost finished. It's a good book, maybe upon reflection it will be great, probably depends on the ending. The author throws out the f-bomb a lot; at least, he did at the beginning. I don't have huge objections to it, if it fits with the character and the situation. At least I understand the word, as opposed to the many, many Spanish words and expressions littered through the book. My all-but-forgotten high school Spanish gets me through only the simplest of the examples. That said, I'm learning some of the Spanish naughty words just from context.

One of the big impressions it has had on me is teaching me of the mind-boggling cruelty of Trujillo's reign in the DR, and the devotion he enforced from his people. The fact that such a clear villain - who is often compared to Sauron - has as his main enemy the communists, the lefties, makes me think. In the Third World where the greedy and violent have absolute control over capitalist systems, maybe communism isn't any worse. At least the people who espoused it believed in egalitarianism. Never mind that some totalitarian bastard always showed up sooner or later to seize power and ruin the show.