Oblivion: Stories
Encyclopedia
Oblivion: Stories is a collection of short fiction by American author David Foster Wallace
. Oblivion is Wallace’s third and last short story collection and was listed as a 2004 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Throughout the stories, Wallace explores the nature of reality, dreams, trauma, and the “dynamics of consciousness.” The story “Good Old Neon” was included The O. Henry Prize Stories 2002.
reported the book had an average score of 68 out of 100, based on 22 reviews. Joel Stein, for Time
writes that the “breathtakingly smart” stories are “epic modernism,” with “big plots, absurd Beckettian humor and science-fiction-height ideas portrayed vis-a-vis slow, realistic stream of consciousness.” Jan Wildt for The San Diego Union-Tribune
writes that Oblivion argues convincingly that the short story is the 42-year-old author's true fictional metier.” She additionally states that Oblivion "puts [Wallace's] stylistic idiosyncrasy to better use than any of its predecessors." Despite these positive reviews, some critics were unimpressed. For The New York Times
, Michiko Kakutani suggests that the collection was dominated by “tiresome, whiny passages.” She writes that even though Wallace is a “prose magician,” in Oblivion he “gives us only the tiniest tasting of his smorgasbord of talents. Instead, he all too often settles for the sort of self-indulgent prattling that bogged down his 1999 collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
, and the cheap brand of irony and ridicule that he once denounced in an essay as 'agents of a great despair and stasis in U.S. culture.'"
In the same essay, Tracey further develops his thoughts on the title story, “Oblivion,” which raises questions about what reality is, and what is real. The story, Tracy asserts, gives an ambiguous answer, which suggests that what is real and true comes from our own decisions about what to believe.
Walter Kim, in a review for The New York Times
, claims that "Good Old Neon" focuses on “a philosophical conundrum: the question of whether human beings can be said to possess authentic selves or whether, like 'David Wallace,' the story's narrator, we are really just a bunch of shabby fakes cut off from our own and others' essential beings by the inadequacy of language.”
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...
. Oblivion is Wallace’s third and last short story collection and was listed as a 2004 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Throughout the stories, Wallace explores the nature of reality, dreams, trauma, and the “dynamics of consciousness.” The story “Good Old Neon” was included The O. Henry Prize Stories 2002.
List of Stories
- "Mister Squishy" was originally published as "Mr. Squishy" in McSweeney'sTimothy McSweeney's Quarterly ConcernTimothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern is a literary journal, first published in 1998, edited by Dave Eggers. The first issue featured only works rejected by other magazines, but thereafter the journal began to include pieces written with McSweeney's in mind. McSweeney’s has since published works by...
#5 (2000), under the pseudonym Elizabeth Klemm. The story takes place in November 1995 and follows a focus group in a Reesemeyer Shannon Belt Advertising conference room as well as the facilitator of the focus group, Terry Schmidt. Schmidt leads the focus group that is taste-testing a new chocolate snack, named “Felonies”, while a person “free climbs” up the buildings north face.
- "The Soul Is Not a Smithy" was originally published in AGNIAGNI (magazine)AGNI is an American literary magazine that publishes poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, interviews, and artwork twice a year in print and biweekly online from its home at Boston University...
#57 (2003). In this story, an unnamed narrator recounts his experience as a boy in his fourth grade civics class in Columbus, Ohio. The substitute teacher Mr. Johnson suffers a psychotic breakdown, which results in a hostage crisis, but the narrator spend his time quietly daydreaming and looking out of the classroom window.
- "Incarnations of Burned Children" was originally published in EsquireEsquire (magazine)Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
(November 2000). A young baby is burnt with boiling water.
- "Another Pioneer" was originally published in Colorado ReviewColorado ReviewColorado Review is a major American literary journal published by the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado.The journal presents the annual Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction...
(Summer 2001). This story is a fable about the effect of a wise child, who can answer any question posed to him, on a Stone Age village.
- "Good Old Neon" was originally published in ConjunctionsConjunctionsConjunctions, is a biannual American literary journal based at Bard College. It was founded in 1981 and is currently edited by Bradford Morrow....
#37 (November 2001). It was also included in O. Henry Prize Stories 2002. This story is a monologue about a lonely narrator who thinks that he is a fraud. Throughout the story, the narrator provides his psychiatrist with stories regarding his deceptions, failures, and manipulations.
- "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" was originally published, in slightly edited form, as "Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (VIII)" in McSweeney'sTimothy McSweeney's Quarterly ConcernTimothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern is a literary journal, first published in 1998, edited by Dave Eggers. The first issue featured only works rejected by other magazines, but thereafter the journal began to include pieces written with McSweeney's in mind. McSweeney’s has since published works by...
#1 (1998). In this story, an unnamed narrator recounts the story of his mother’s botched facial plastic surgery, which left her with a look of constant terror on her face, and the litigation surrounding that surgery. The narrator also mentions throughout the story his own entanglement in litigation related to his black-widow spider farm.
- "Oblivion" In this story, the narrator, Randall Napier, recounts his exhausting fight with his wife Hope over his alleged snoring, which she claims has been so loud that it keeps her awake at night. Randall protests, maintaining that he was awake and consequently unable to snore, while his wife was actually asleep. Eventually they travel to a Sleep Clinic in order to monitor their behaviors and determine for certain who is right.
- "The Suffering Channel" Skip Atwater, a writer for StyleStyle (magazine)Style was an iconic South African women's magazine that was founded in the 1980s and published by Caxton and CTP Publishers and Printers Limited. In late 2006, it was announced that the magazine would be discontinued. The magazine has often been associated with a Kugel readership....
, attempts to write an article about an extremely shy and private man from Indiana, Brint Moltke, whose excrement reportedly resembles famous cultural objects.
Critical reception
The book received generally positive reviews from critics. The review aggregator MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
reported the book had an average score of 68 out of 100, based on 22 reviews. Joel Stein, for Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
writes that the “breathtakingly smart” stories are “epic modernism,” with “big plots, absurd Beckettian humor and science-fiction-height ideas portrayed vis-a-vis slow, realistic stream of consciousness.” Jan Wildt for The San Diego Union-Tribune
The San Diego Union-Tribune
-Predecessors:The predecessor newspapers of the Union-Tribune were:* San Diego Sun, founded 1861 and merged with the Evening Tribune in 1939.* San Diego Union, founded October 10, 1868.* Evening Tribune, founded December 2, 1895.-Ownership:...
writes that Oblivion argues convincingly that the short story is the 42-year-old author's true fictional metier.” She additionally states that Oblivion "puts [Wallace's] stylistic idiosyncrasy to better use than any of its predecessors." Despite these positive reviews, some critics were unimpressed. For The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Michiko Kakutani suggests that the collection was dominated by “tiresome, whiny passages.” She writes that even though Wallace is a “prose magician,” in Oblivion he “gives us only the tiniest tasting of his smorgasbord of talents. Instead, he all too often settles for the sort of self-indulgent prattling that bogged down his 1999 collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is a collection of 23 short stories by David Foster Wallace. Several of the stories are entitled "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" and are presented as transcripts of interviews with male subjects...
, and the cheap brand of irony and ridicule that he once denounced in an essay as 'agents of a great despair and stasis in U.S. culture.'"
Analysis
Thomas Tracey asserts that, in “The Soul Is Not a Smithy” as well as many of the other stories in Oblivion, Wallace seeks to “place the crucial events of each tale beyond the frame of the main exposition.” Indeed, “the important actions of the narrative are seen to occur only on the extreme periphery of the narrator’s awareness.” Tracy suggests that the meaning and goal of this is to “call for greater attentiveness to out peripheral surroundings” and to show that “the most important events of our lives often take place on the margins of our quotidian experience.” Tracey also maintains that the narrator’s inattentiveness in class also depicts how “imaginiation can provide a psychological outlet, or refuge, from suffering.”In the same essay, Tracey further develops his thoughts on the title story, “Oblivion,” which raises questions about what reality is, and what is real. The story, Tracy asserts, gives an ambiguous answer, which suggests that what is real and true comes from our own decisions about what to believe.
Walter Kim, in a review for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, claims that "Good Old Neon" focuses on “a philosophical conundrum: the question of whether human beings can be said to possess authentic selves or whether, like 'David Wallace,' the story's narrator, we are really just a bunch of shabby fakes cut off from our own and others' essential beings by the inadequacy of language.”