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Oblivion
In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homic...more
Paperback, 336 pages
Published
August 30th 2005
by Back Bay Books
(first published January 1st 2004)
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Oh boy. Oh man, do I have a lot to say about this here book. I can't even begin to tackle it as a whole entity, so I'm going to do a review of each story, unless I get tired and have to smoosh. Also: I am the kind of person who listens to all my music on shuffle, which means I clearly have no respect for the artist's conception of a complete work. Consequently I read these stories totally out of order, and will review them the same way.
"The Suffering Channel" and "Mis...more
"The Suffering Channel" and "Mis...more
view all 11 comments
If nothing else, this book really made me think. Maybe even over-think. This book invites it. There is a lot to mull over in each of these stories, and DFW is very rarely direct about anything, preferring to leave clues along the way.
I think it’s interesting that each story has its own specific vocabulary and/or verbal tics from Mister Squishy's ad agency lingo to Oblivion’s strange use of latin/pace/'air-quotes' to Suffering Channel’s magazine-speak; it’s almost as if the chara...more
I think it’s interesting that each story has its own specific vocabulary and/or verbal tics from Mister Squishy's ad agency lingo to Oblivion’s strange use of latin/pace/'air-quotes' to Suffering Channel’s magazine-speak; it’s almost as if the chara...more
Mi DFW favorito hasta la fecha. Antes de leer 'Extinción', David Foster Wallace me gustaba: escribía bien, era postmoderno, original y divertido, pero sus cuentos eran sólo anécdotas, algunas más incisivas que otras, pero anécdotas al fin y al cabo. En cambio 'Extinción' va mucho más allá. Sus cuentos alcanzan una profundidad impresionante y, detrás de la anécdota, nos acaba hablando de cosas universales que nos afectan a todos, básicamente acaba hablando del sufrimiento, del horror, de la trage...more
I've only got a few pages left of the last story in this collection and the whole thing has just been so excruciatingly beautiful I am almost palpably sad to see its end approach. That the guy whose mind from whence this sprung had to want to die so bad is just the worst the worst the worst.
Done. Buh. So sad.
Done. Buh. So sad.
Lo que está claro es que los libros de David Foster Wallace, o te gustan o no te gustan. Personalmente, me gusta cuando le da más importancia al fondo de la historia, que a la forma de contarla. Cuando no me gusta es cuando experimenta. En este sentido, 'Extinción' es el libro que más me ha gustado por ahora de DFW.
La característica más destacable de la escritura de DFW, no es su calidad literaria, que la tiene y mucha, ni las historias que cuenta, que son magníficas, todo un prodigi...more
La característica más destacable de la escritura de DFW, no es su calidad literaria, que la tiene y mucha, ni las historias que cuenta, que son magníficas, todo un prodigi...more
From my favorite story, "Good Old Neon":
"What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant."
Oblivion is not as consistently solid as his first short stories collection Girl With Curious Hair, but hands down is amazing nonetheless.
Only slight complaint: The very first story is a bit difficult as it's loaded w...more
"What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant."
Oblivion is not as consistently solid as his first short stories collection Girl With Curious Hair, but hands down is amazing nonetheless.
Only slight complaint: The very first story is a bit difficult as it's loaded w...more
No arranca Extinción de forma demasiado afortunada: Señor Blandito resulta, de entrada, un relato innecesariamente denso que cae de pleno en algunos de los tics más irritantes de la literatura contemporánea (distancia narrativa, descripción exhaustiva con ínfulas de objetivismo científico, descripción como enumeración). Y aunque algunos de estos tics ensombrecen pasajes de algunos de los otros relatos, cuando has acabado Extinción debes rendirte a la evidencia de que David Foster Wallace sabe ll...more
Oh, man. Do you see how I couldn't really recommend this book to anybody, despite the fact that I voted it five stars? That's because I genuinely felt haunted by some of the enclosed stories. Now, let's think about that for a second: "haunted." What that means, basically, is that I felt like the stories were inside of me and that I really, really wished that they weren't there. Especially the title story, which is hands down the most powerful piece of written-word language ever t...more
I get a little depressed after reading DFW books because I realize how far my writing skills fall short. This book is insanely dense and show-offy in the best sense (like when a magician draws attention to himself to fool you...then leaves you breathless after the bangs and flashes). This is a book of short stories, though some should technically be called novellas, each with totally implausible plots...until Wallace pulls it off. Faulknerian sentences were sort of his schtick in Infinite Jest--...more
Another one where I'd like give it 2.5 stars. Stories are hit ( the one about the spiders, the one about the kids in the classroom, the guy who's a fraud) and miss (the one about the kid in the village, incarnations of burned children) and in between (Mr. Squishy, the title story about the snoring).
I think DFW succeeds when his stories have some heart underneath the excessive and crazy details. Sometimes, too, DFW just needs to give us a few more paragraph breaks.
If you r...more
I think DFW succeeds when his stories have some heart underneath the excessive and crazy details. Sometimes, too, DFW just needs to give us a few more paragraph breaks.
If you r...more
I couldn’t help hearing a cry for help in every story by David Foster Wallace. The fact that the author committed suicide sat on my shoulder and nudged me at every disparaging word (of which one should expect in a book entitled Ovlivion). But just like a BP worker might want to pass by an oil covered sea turtle, I ignored his calls and instead enchanted myself with his rich prose and got lost in a copse of trees while following one of his full-to-the-brim sentences. I’ve added everything I cou...more
This review is stewing and "in process."
Oblivion: Stories: A soul-piercing look at the
torture of having a schism between the inner and the outer life. An extremely successful man commits suicide because he can't stop manipulating other people to like him, but he also--after that suicide--sits in the car with his pre-suicide self on the way to the smash-up,
counseling, or does he? ("Good Old Neon") A Field Researcher and Group Facilitator for Market ...more
Oblivion: Stories: A soul-piercing look at the
torture of having a schism between the inner and the outer life. An extremely successful man commits suicide because he can't stop manipulating other people to like him, but he also--after that suicide--sits in the car with his pre-suicide self on the way to the smash-up,
counseling, or does he? ("Good Old Neon") A Field Researcher and Group Facilitator for Market ...more
I picked this up after hearing an old interview of the author on NPR. The show was aired in the recent aftermath of Foster Wallace's suicide. His manic fast talk and wit reminded me of an old college buddy, a similarly gifted writer who perhaps fortunately never made it big.
I tried getting into this book several times. My ADD kept me from making much progress. Foster Wallace's sentences can go on for months. But I did finish and enjoy "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature"...more
I tried getting into this book several times. My ADD kept me from making much progress. Foster Wallace's sentences can go on for months. But I did finish and enjoy "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature"...more
I don’t think collections serve Foster Wallace well: it seems to me his stories would read better as stand-alones on some thoroughly modern internet webshite, with accompanying artwork or explanatory hyperlinks, rather than modishly festering on some fading acid paper alongside all the other fuddy-duddies. (PS Abacus, your paper is cheap and lousy). Case in point is ‘Mister Squishy,’ which seems to cry out for its own accompanying glossary, appended addenda and so on, but sits uneasily on the pa...more
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Sometimes I find David Foster Wallace a little hyper-intellectual and what I mean by that is he has many great ideas that get lost in his own hyperbolic self. Some of the appeal of the greatest writers of our time-take Hemingway or Kerouac for instance is that they were able to write novels that anyone with interest in literature could grasp and understand. Wallace is (was) a bit of an elitist in this respect. He writes novels for the highest literary echelon to try to fathom and after awhile...more
Based on some negative reviews I had read of this book, I started reading it expecting to be disappointed. Far from it; it actually ended up sucking me in, and I thought that it was an excellent read overall. Some stories are far stronger than others, of course. "Good Old Neon" and "The Soul is Not a Smithy" were my two favorites, the former because it seemed the most moving, personal story in the collection, and the latter simply because I thought it was a very unique app...more
This is more of a 3.5 than a 4, that I'm rounding Wallace up for. This book is an interesting read for a number of reasons. It has some great stories ("Good Old Neon," "Incarnations of Burned Children," and "The Suffering Channel"--who doesn't love a good poop story?), some solidly good stories ("Mr. Squishy," "The Soul is Not a Smithy," and "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature) as well as a couple I found less rewarding. Anyway, it's intere...more
I really enjoyed the title story from this book and at least parts of the others. This may sound horrid but from his writing in this book I could understand why he committed suicide: his mind must have been constantly working, looking, dissecting and analysing - living with a mind like that must have been incredibly difficult. This tendency to dissect situations and people meant that, in most of these stories, what started out interesting, expanded into something deeper and more interesting, but...more
I read a review recently of DFW's dealing with a book I've not read by David Markson called Wittgenstein's Mistress. (This is how much I love DFW -- I'll read reviews he's written on books about which I am clueless) In the review he mentions the narrator's explicitly revealing stream-of-consciousness which includes everything that passes through her mind's periphery. He notes his admiration for this technique. He seems to see it as more honest than the narrators of what he calls "the Ca...more
I've read in various places about his biography and his struggles with depression, and I agree deeply the observation that Wallace was exquisitely attuned to the suffering in the world around him. He's like an antenna focused on the excruciating struggle of humanity—of individuals and the whole, seething mass of us.
I'm not at all shocked that he found it unbearable to live with it.
And it's a bittersweet thing that we have in our hands this volume of the distilled day-...more
I'm not at all shocked that he found it unbearable to live with it.
And it's a bittersweet thing that we have in our hands this volume of the distilled day-...more
This work is also very aptly named, being titled “Oblivion.” The stories portray the vastness and the in-between feeling, the distraction and the void of oblivion. I suppose it’s not a place my mind really likes to dwell. While I think the writer’s mind is brilliant, I did not like this book. This is very unusual for me as I feel I can read and appreciate a wide variety of literature. I especially love short stories so it was very surprising to come across a collection of short stories tha...more
I should get one thing out of the way: David Foster Wallace is, quite plainly, a genius. His work shows such a mastery of the English language (while simultaneously condemning its limitations, but that's aside) and its various specialized vernacular pools that it's strange to consider the man wasn't a member of the corporate worlds he displays.
That said, I'm not in love with his style. His sentences, while drenched with detail, are easy to get lost in, and while he does avoid becomin...more
That said, I'm not in love with his style. His sentences, while drenched with detail, are easy to get lost in, and while he does avoid becomin...more
I never noticed that this little box didn't just say "My Review" at the top. I'm not sure whether this is a new edition or what, but it also says: "/What I learned from this book." So that's what I'm going with this time. So here comes what I learned from David Foster Wallace's "Oblivion," his final selection of short stories. What I learned is that wherever DFW was "going" with his writing--fiction, non-fiction, whatever--he was getting oh so close with t...more
(Accurate rating would probably be 3.7)
Reading the book on Cantor by DFW got me intrigued with the author, so I tried to see what he achieves on a non-non-fiction topic ... and was very pleased to find idiosyncracies galore, as I had expected!
The edition I read was actually a translated excerpt of the original, but I think, I got most of the spirit. It contained three stories, about: an (amateur?) entomologist and his cosmetic surgery victim mother; a couple and its teetering on the...more
Reading the book on Cantor by DFW got me intrigued with the author, so I tried to see what he achieves on a non-non-fiction topic ... and was very pleased to find idiosyncracies galore, as I had expected!
The edition I read was actually a translated excerpt of the original, but I think, I got most of the spirit. It contained three stories, about: an (amateur?) entomologist and his cosmetic surgery victim mother; a couple and its teetering on the...more
Oblivion was my first Wallace book. I was not disappointed. The style of the writing tends to distance his characters, which can be a little off-putting in the stories with less warmth than the others. However, both Wallace's verbal prowess and his powers of observation make each of the stories in this collection engaging, if not also profound.
My favorites tend to be those with a bit more of a comic tone to them (Mister Squishy, Oblivion, The Suffering Channel), though Good Old Neon, d...more
My favorites tend to be those with a bit more of a comic tone to them (Mister Squishy, Oblivion, The Suffering Channel), though Good Old Neon, d...more
Marjorie
added it
I am putting this book on the "read" shelf, despite the fact I could not get through it. I started the first essay and finally realized, after having not been able to get my head around a point in the book, that the "sentence" I was reading was, ohhh, about a page and a half long. I mean, call me old school, but for the love of christ, put a fucking period in there somewhere so I can tell my brain the thought is complete. I felt like a crazy person trying to get through th...more
Wallace certainly has a personal, peculiar style. Very few of these stories progress linearly, and there's a tendency for each to follow jaunts into odd but curiously specific details, all well-written and even captivating, but still excrescent. Resolution is neither aimed for nor achieved. Moreover, there's little forward momentum--plots move forward often no more than five minutes, and a fairly long story is spun out of the exhaustive examination of those moments. The ending may be revealed in...more
I don't know. On the one hand I loved reading Wallace's prose. Dare I say that it is Proustian in its revelations about the internal, inexpressible life we all lead. There are just a handful of stories here, or maybe some of them are novellas. Very few of them are traditionally structured stories with a clear moral or closure to them. On the one hand I like that, because I get annoyed with authors that spell everything out for me like I can't get their lofty points...but on the other hand i...more
My first David Foster Wallace experience. I'm not pitching a tent over this book, but I won't deny that it's a compelling read either. Good Old Neon and Another Pioneer are my inarguable favorites. I really enjoyed the depth with which the narrator continued to explain where he had overheard the story he was telling in Another Pioneer. The really short stories that aren't more than five pages long are definitely worth rereading.
It becomes very apparent throughout the book that there is mu...more
It becomes very apparent throughout the book that there is mu...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Expectativas sobre Extinción | 1 | 17 | Jan 07, 2008 06:01am |
David Foster Wallace worked surprising turns on nearly everything: novels, journalism, vacation. His life was an information hunt, collecting hows and whys. "I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today," he once said, "of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of it." He wanted to write "stuff about what it feels like to live. Instead of being...more
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“What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.”
—
69 people liked it
“The truth is you already know what it's like. You already know the difference between the size and speed of everything that flashes through you and the tiny inadequate bit of it all you can ever let anyone know. As though inside you is this enormous room full of what seems like everything in the whole universe at one time or another and yet the only parts that get out have to somehow squeeze out through one of those tiny keyholes you see under the knob in older doors. As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes.
But it does have a knob, the door can open. But not in the way you think...The truth is you've already heard this. That this is what it's like. That it's what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. And you think it makes you a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you're a fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know it's only a part. Who wouldn't? It's called free will, Sherlock. But at the same time it's why it feels so good to break down and cry in front of others, or to laugh, or speak in tongues, or chant in Bengali--it's not English anymore, it's not getting squeezed through any hole.
So cry all you want, I won't tell anybody.”
—
34 people liked it
More quotes…
But it does have a knob, the door can open. But not in the way you think...The truth is you've already heard this. That this is what it's like. That it's what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. And you think it makes you a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you're a fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know it's only a part. Who wouldn't? It's called free will, Sherlock. But at the same time it's why it feels so good to break down and cry in front of others, or to laugh, or speak in tongues, or chant in Bengali--it's not English anymore, it's not getting squeezed through any hole.
So cry all you want, I won't tell anybody.”
