Rating: 
Summary: Is it just me, or...
Review: ... do others see an unfortunate emerging stagger in David Foster Wallace's experiments in free-wheeling prose?I may be totally wrong in my theoretical problem with Oblivion; given the extreme level of reader interest and cooperation that DFW's stories and novels require, I can't be certain that I'm not just one of the other dufuses who just plain DONT GET HIM. I have tried, however, and am proud to place Infinite Jest in my top ten favorite novels list (I actually read that monster twice! Woof!) So here goes: my theory is that the most fundamental "Jest" in Infinite Jest is the lack of resolution of the story and the myriad plotlines. If you manage to plow through the dense but enjoyable prose, you are actually pretty engaged in the plights of the dozen or so demi-protagonists, and actively speculating to yourself what the resolution will be. DFW actively encourages this, to the extent that ultimate denoument for Hal, Don and the Veiled lady is denied; in other words, you have to actively put the non-chronological pieces of the puzzle together in your mind, because it ain't spelled out for you in the manner that most of us (quite reasonably) expect from thier fiction. The joke, in other words, is on the reader, because the reader has to actively participate in the conclusion of the story in order to "get it;" and in the end, there is no difinitve answer to the question "What the hell actually happend to...?" so the jest is effectively infinite. Ugh, I know, that's a chewy mouthful of an opening paragraph, but I'll wrap this up quickly. Oblivion uses this device so frequently in the short stories that it inspires frustration, rather than awe at the author's story-telling acumen. DFW repeatedly sets up mesmerising plots with his trademark narrative quirks (footnotes, three-page long sentences, metafictional third-wall breaking etc.) but denies the reader a tidy ending. Despite the fact that the intent reader can see the ending coming, DFW habitually denies the reader of this convenient pleasure. I continue to be amazed by DFW's intellect, style, and breadth of subject matter, but I'm really getting frustrated with the meta-fictional crap. David, write a novel for God's sake. Or stick with the non-fiction that you do so so very well (Everything and More, his "compact history" of infinity is the genre-bending tour de force that you expect it to be -- check it out.) Or, if you insist on focusing on short stories, think up some new tricks. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Shame, shame on me.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad at all. Pretty good and ofen brilliant, in fact.
Review: At his best, David Foster Wallace is an astute chronicler of the often needless (and fruitless) complications characters create for themselves. In these eight stories, he outlines the absurdity, sadness, and sheer comic reality of the outer-edge of consciousness. Fashion magazine editorial boards, consumer research companies, and paranoid office situations are among the areas fictively explored where human activity fractures into dozens of frantic, nervous tangents. Oblivion is a dizzying, daring set of tales - a riveting virtuoso performance. Ironic, yes, that Wallace's exhausting "maximalist" style, which seems dedicated to fitting everything in sight into a sentence that contains everything else, works best in his shorter pieces: the humor hits harder, the stretches of associations don't have time to die on the vine.
Rating: 
Summary: A major disappointment
Review: For quite some time now I have suspected that David Foster Wallace is little more than a modestly talented wordsmith who has nothing significant to say--this book sadly confirms my suspicion. Not one of these stories rises above the level of what one would expect to find in a typical undergraduate creative writing class. The subject-matter (example: an artist sculpts statues out of his own excrement)is the stuff of frat house humor. The writing is often flat. And the overuse of obscure words when more familiar words would suffice is annoyingly pretentious. A large vocabulary is not synonomous with genius. And frustrating a reader's expectations at every turn is not by any mean a hallmark of great, or even very good, art. The most unfortunate thing about this book -- and about Wallace in general -- is that unlike most of his equally pretentious peers (i.e., William Vollman, Richard Powers), he shows evidence in his essays of possessing all the talent that is needed to become a first-rate novelist. If only he would stop calling attention to himself with his every utterance and learn instead how to direct the reader's attention to the story at hand, then he might just produce the great novel that he seems capable of writing.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect for fans of postmodern literature
Review: He's the POMO (postmodern literature) Diva! He's the king of long sentences that make up plus-size novels. He's the Leslie Fiedler for the X generation. He's David Foster Wallace and he's POMOlicious, the "Wallacefriscizzlesizzle"!
And today's American culture of extremes and "reality" programming, target hyper-marketing, "herd"-driven individualism, identity theft, and the epidemic of minor medical disorders feature prominently in the thematic backdrops of OBLIVION, Wallace's latest collection of "short" stories, following 1999's BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN. Infamous for his mind-melting 1,079-page INFINITE JEST (the "cement shoes" of contemporary novels), a fictional biography (with no ending) of a tennis prodigy and a lost movie, Wallace has made a literary career from the sardonic postmodern form, employed most effectively by Thomas Pynchon (MASON & DIXON).
For those unfamiliar with Pynchon and Wallace, authors who seem to write when they are possibly "on acid" with the desire of making the reader feel as if he or she is "on acid," it is best to start with Wallace's BRIEF INTERVIEWS or Pynchon's THE CRYING OF LOT 49 as initiation to this artistic style and brand of humor. As humble reviewer, I (the "reviewer," not the "on acid" reader) offer "style" and "brand" in the singular form because, at times, it is difficult to tell these two authors apart. Pynchon came first in the age of Flower Power while Wallace continues the tradition today. As in INFINITE JEST and his other works, Wallace, in OBLIVION (a book for dedicated fans of the author --- "fans" meaning readers who tolerate [or even "love"] sentences that go on for pages, few paragraph breaks, excessive parenthesis and quotation, lots of academic yet "hip" or snappy footnotes, and the other scholarly techniques normally utilized in formal essay, biography, and even in monograph forms), parodies an America so overloaded with corporate marketing and political media spin that the initial sales message of a brand of cola or allergy relief medicine becomes a parody of itself before Wallace's parody makes it to the bookshelves, like the Disney corporation banning a movie it sponsored and produced.
The story that gives Wallace's latest collection its name concerns Randall, an over-stressed corporate drone with a snoring problem. The snoring is the "tip of the iceberg" one might say, as Randall is shocked out of sleep, mid-snore, each night by wife Hope, who cannot sleep because of Randall's snoring. Shaken from "fourth-stage" sleep by Hope, Randall is left to lay awake for several hours by Hope's protests because he believes that she is not being woken by his possibly fictional snoring. Instead, Randall feels that Hope is having "night terrors" associated with "empty nest syndrome" as a result of her daughter, Audrey, leaving home for college, out-of-state. Wallace delightfully explores the mother-daughter jealousy brought on by age in the deteriorating Hope and the budding, nubile Audrey, for whom Randall lusts (she is his stepdaughter, not his biological daughter). Yet Randall is plagued by his own lust for the daughter because he fears (and sees in stress-related hallucinations) that Hope herself might have once been (in her younger years) the target of her own stepfather's misdirected affections.
The snoring solution? Randall and Hope seek the counseling of the experts at a sleep clinic, as Wallace pokes fun at the variety of imagined medical disorders that plague the American (Americans are even better these days at "complaining" than our brothers to the north, the Canadians) psyche --- peanut allergies, insomnia, depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, dizziness, migraine headaches, acid reflux disease, etc. --- and a greedy medical community that rushes to find answers to these "disorders" while the more critical cancer and AIDS go uncured.
In OBLIVION's "Mister Squishy," Wallace lampoons corporate marketing, advertising, focus groups, extreme workouts and dieting as a Chicago ad firm ponders the sale of a chocoholic snack dubbed "Felonies!" The oddest and most un-Wallace story in the collection is "The Soul is Not a Smithy," concerning a boy's comic book daydreaming and substitute teacher's mental breakdown in an elementary school. The story is too violently reminiscent of Stephen King's early, immature and overwritten "Rage" from the BACHMAN BOOKS.
But OBLIVION is signature "Wallace" and will delight Pynchonites and Wallaceheads everywhere with this satiric brand of storytelling that, in setting the reader up with an interesting, everyday plot and offering no resolution or ending proper
--- Reviewed by Brandon M. Stickney
Rating:
Summary: ^*^ All Hail the Unreliable Narrator ^*^
Review: Hey, Mr. Stickney (previous reviewer) -- " . . . can I ask why the thing with the fingers?" [hardcover page 209]
That's what the counselor in the title story "Oblivion" says to the narrator-husband who, like Mr. Brandon Stickney, reviewer, likes to pretend that when a word is ironically self-quoted `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less' [apologies to Humpty Dumpty and to Lewis Carroll].
What amazes me is that all the reviews posted here so far have ignored the real element of genius in Wallace's latest collection of short stories . . . his use of the Unreliable Narrator.
The UN is a hot topic in 21st-century postmodern lit. T. C. Boyle's novel about Kinsey, _The Inner Circle_, has recently drawn critical attention to the technique, but Wallace is truly the master. Nothing can compare to the satisfaction one feels in realizing that we mere readers know more than the UN: as readers we're so accustomed to believing the omniscient third-person storyteller when s/he tells us what is going on in each character's head, so it's really quite fun to play Spot the UN's Character Flaws, although more introspective readers may squirm when the realization hits them that they too have been as blind to social nuance as the overconfident market researcher in "Mister Squisky."
Unfortunately the UN and bizarre circumstances alone will not carry a story. Wallace's stories are ultimately unsatisfying. While no one wants a tacked-on O. Henry-esque surprise ending, most readers would prefer an ending, any ending. Wallace keeps us delightfully engaged, working our way through dense tangles of prose the likes of which have not been seen since Henry James', then drops us flat on our collective arses. "You figure out how it ends," he seems to say. "I can't be bothered."
Rating: 
Summary: Let's hope its not five more years
Review: I had read the majority of these pieces in Esquire, Agni, McSweeney's, and Conjuctions, and was somewhat dissapointed that I would only have a few left over to read.
Happily, two of the pieces I hadn't read, Oblivion and Suffering Channel, more than make up for that fact.
If you buy this book, just open to the first story and start reading. Don't read the back, the inside jacket, etc. A few major plot points are given away, a trend I just don't understand. The only thing the majority of people picking up this book need to know is that Wallace wrote it.
Let's hope he turns out another novel before we're all dead.
Rating:
Summary: DFW Greatness, as usual
Review: I haven't picked up a DFW book in a while, probably since "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men." I've always enjoyed his work, although I usually turn to pulp after reading it to cleanse the palate.
This is a good collection of stories, written in his usual manner -- although fewer footnotes than previous works. The only gripe I have is that some stories seem to end just before they hit their stride. Many just stop. You feel that he's about to go somewhere, and then the story just ends, like he got sick of writing it and just said, "aw, to hell with it."
Rating:
Summary: At least the footnotes were kept to a minimum...
Review: I read Broom of the System, and I thought... hey, thats kinda neat. Then I read The Girl with Curious Hair, and thought... hey thats kinda neat. Then I read A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and thought... wow, that one is actually really good. Then there was Brief Interviews with Hideous Men... and that one was actually good, too. Then there was Infinite Jest which I never finished. There is nothing in the world as boring and disgusting as an author writing for the buttressing of his own ego. Did his Mom not give him enough hugs when he was a kid? It is almost as if he is jumping up and down on top of a pile of high school awards and college degrees, waving his arms like an idiot and screaming "Look how clever I am!"
Oblivion I bought out of habit, as I own all but one of his books. As I gave the man my money, I thought, y'know, this is just gonna be self-indulgent crap. And I was right.
The stories are written with what I can only construe as a general disdain for the English language, which is not to mean that it is poorly written... it is just that there is no joy in it. Everything is written so dry and sterile I was afraid that I'd become dehydrated in the reading of it. It is limp, lifeless, barren, flaccid. I still cannot recall what any of the stories are about, no what... none of them are about anything except proving that the author would rather exercise his hipster-meta-fiction street-cred than write something good.
David Foster Wallace really needs to stop, reasses his life, stop the navel gazing and and write something that doesn't suck.
Rating:
Summary: absolutely amazing
Review: i'm a big david foster wallace fan and have read all of his other works. this one is my favorite so far (in a very tight race with Infinte Jest). these stories are PERFECTLY structured (you can tell this guy is a mathematician). but along with this perfect structure is also (surprise!) a deep undercurrent of philosophy by a mind that seems to really SEE what makes up this world. if you want to be led by your nose through a book this author is not for you but if you appreciate fine writing with a real soul you need to check out this boy's stuff!
Rating:
Summary: Much Better Than Brief Interviews and Girl w Curious Hair
Review: If you think Mr. Squishy is "tedious and goes nowhere," you are just not going to enjoy this book. It's a bit like what Karl Rove said about those prospective American voters who were disgusted by Abu Ghraib and vowed to vote W out, "Well, we never had those people on our side anyway." But, if you're able to put up with Wallace's style and do a little hard work, there is a very rewarding and entertaining intellectual adventure in store for you here. Wallace is a diagnostician of American malaise. Very dark, bizarre, and -- for me at least -- extremely moving when taken as a sum total instead of as eight distinct pieces about loneliness. As for comparing Wallace to Candace Bushnell, whoever said that should have their library card revoked, "stat."
|
