Oblivion: Stories

by David Foster Wallace

The facilitator played idly

them.

Find commonality among characters.

Inspired, according to agency rumor,

Not inspired?

unconventionally informative

Deceptively experienced,

Preference and Satisfaction axes.

Studying geometry will aid me in comparing and contrasting data, like whether something is satisfactory, or to my preference.

their faces arranged in the mildly sullen expressions of consumers who have never once questioned their entitlement to satisfaction or meaning.

astringent

Crisco Kid, which he had laughingly explained meant fat in the can.

One of the older men wore black silk or rayon socks with tiny lozenges of dark rich red upon them. Another of the older men had a mean little slit of a mouth, another a face far too saggy and seamed for his demographic slot.

moist slapping intercourse

pale hum

None had been hungry a day in their lives—this was a core commonality, and for Schmidt this one did ramify.

And what was important to consumers was, always and invariably, themselves.

The autumn sky itself the sort of blue that seems to burn.

group.

Materialize into yourselves via group. Time is a group.

cocoa-brown cordovan loafer.

rubicund

offend

"You aren't as truthful as you're going to be in the future." Use the negativity to speak truth.

You are not decanting; you’re after what is being filtered out.

*Offering

You are not decanting; you’re after what is being filtered out.

Speech

To brainstorm.

The trick was not to think or edit, just let it all fly.

For it is true that the most vivid and enduring occurrences in our lives are often those that occur at the periphery of our awareness.

enervated

ANOTHER PIONEER

evection,

I know this part is boring and probably boring you, by the way, but it gets a lot more interesting when I get to the part where I kill myself and discover what happens immediately after a person dies.

The fraudulence paradox was that the more time and effort you put into trying to appear impressive or attractive to other people, the less impressive or attractive you felt inside—you were a fraud. And the more of a fraud you felt like, the harder you tried to convey an impressive or likable image of yourself so that other people wouldn’t find out what a hollow, fraudulent person you really were.

Meaning that by lying in such a deliberately unconvincing way I could actually get everything that a direct lie would supposedly get me, plus look noble and self-sacrificing, plus also make my stepparents feel good because they always tended to feel good when one of their kids did something that showed character, because it’s the sort of thing they couldn’t really help but see as reflecting favorably on them as shapers of their kids’ character.

believed.

What does it mean to believe in death?

tumid

one of the worst things about the conception of competitive, achievement-oriented masculinity that America supposedly hardwired into its males was that it caused a more or less constant state of fear that made genuine love next to impossible.

Basically I was in that state in which a man realizes that everything he sees will outlast him. As a verbal construction I know that’s a cliché. As a state in which to actually be, though, it’s something else, believe me.

my own basic problem was that at an early age I’d somehow chosen to cast my lot with my life’s drama’s supposed audience instead of with the drama itself,

I was partly concerned that it might be spectacular and dramatic and might look as if the driver was trying to go out in as dramatic a way as possible. This is the sort of shit we waste our lives thinking about.

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.

‘Not another word.’

a good vantage

‘neural protest’ or ‘-revolt’

Brainstorm

Renaissance horizon.

home.

It was a shoddy urinal, waterless and dilative with its beige porcelain. Unmarked as of now, he slight hue shone with a dressingly stupid stupor, markedly evident from the little plastic grated shovel which hung next to the pale matching pail.

concussive static.

power constellations

The most significant sign of an approaching tornado would be a greenish cast to the ambient light and a sudden drop in pressure that made one’s ears pop.

CONSCIOUSNESS IS NATURE’S NIGHTMARE

that this was the single great informing conflict of the American psyche. The management of insignificance.

Skip Atwater often got the queer sense that he was in fact not a body that occupied space but rather just a bodyshaped area of space itself, impenetrable but empty, with a certain vacuous roaring sensation we tend to associate with empty space.

‘Then the answer again is that what we’re interested in is human interest, not some abstract aesthetic value.’

It is a fact of life that certain people are corrosive to others’ self esteem simply as a function of who and what they are.