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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 "Mister Squishy"I think these a...
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...
)(^*&^%$*^#$$)*($*(%*(_Q_^*#%&^!Oblivion - consigned to, by some class act who deleted the pdf and the accompanying seven reviews and 103 ratings of Good Old Neon without the simple foresight to MERGE said pdf listing with the final collection (and for those of you who don't think it was sufficient as a standalone check out the Mighty Jumbuck's review of this listing) of join-the-dots-as-stories by DFW.Read no further if you've read already (with apologies to the appreciated commenters who rest
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 with corporate marketing, PR and advertising jargon, but it...
The unconscious paradoxNobody would question David Foster Wallace’ talent: his ability to reinvent himself over and over in his fabulous essays and fiction, the extravagant ways in which his writing developed, the subconscious levels of his prose, the intricate craftsmanship that constitute the inner rhythmic quality of what we can call his style, the density that prevails, the chosen topics, the views of life, the engagement with a system he deplored, his ability to ironize, dissect, observe, a...
David Foster Wallace inspires many complaints -- he is overly self-conscious, he abuses the footnote, he is at times impenetrable -- but here happily, none of these are especially true. Even the post-modern playfulness is reigned in somewhat. Unlike the layered interviews and broken portraits of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, these are more properly stories (or even novellas, perhaps, as many are quite lengthy), winding and carefully plotted, and fully invested in the narrative. Only a singl...
"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."- David Foster Wallace, Oblivion Let me get my biases out in the open. I love DFW. I have to be careful somedays to not fall-down and worship his novels. Wallace's nonfiction talent also hits me as evidence that the universe is not even slightly fair. But, I've always been just a little unsettled (and occasionally f...
“Might there ever be any questions you yourself wish to ask?”“Consciousness is nature’s nightmare"In the first two short stories DFW gave voice to the consequences born from living in the pressure cooker of boredom and routine. Following that was the theme of self-awareness and the powers it gives us along with the suffering that follows.---Challenges throughout the book ranged from having to keep track of three or more story lines at once to dealing with names like Ellen Bactrain. Is it pronoun...
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.
“People Prefer Electric Shock to Thinking: Study” was the way they put it in the New York Post only a few days ago. Whether these click- and tenure-bait studies are worth the time and energy it takes read about them is an excellent question, but assuming that this particular one is, the world reaction could probably be divided into two categories: non-readers of DF Wallace, and readers of same. The former may have snorted derisively, rolled their eyes, or lamented (silently or aloud) the state o...
I hardly made it to read two out of the eight stories. I really wonder how low should modern literature level be, so that writings like this be considered masterpieces . Wallace's writing style is quite different from what I personally think of as artistic- boring, pointless descriptions that fill pages and pages, sentences that can reach up to 15 lines, and NO ACTION AT ALL, not even a psychological approach of the characters, not even a pioneering idea or a contermporary questioning of the ame...
David Foster Wallace is a literary stylist, and one can dislike his style without denying the fact that he is an outstanding writer. While reading Oblivion, my opinion of this style was constantly switching. Sometimes I was reading something brilliant, transcendent, which in both language and perspective captured perfectly and beautifully the essence of his subject. However the greater part of the experience was one of pure tedium. Wallace does like to go on and on and on, about every minute det...
