Fukú Americanus and the Tragic Intertext: Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

On the Half-Life of Love instigates in the reader a Pierre Menard effect.One wishes it were possible to better his book by copying it out word-for-word and thus adding to its magnificent contribution to studies of Daz. 1 It is true that Jorge Luis Borges's character sought to do this with Cervantes' Don Quixote, implying that the generativity of the fictional world always legitimizes a form of (re)creation.But there is something special to be said for the careful and insightful work that Saldvar has done in his book to open even further avenues for thinking about Daz's work.For the meticulous process that he deploys to