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A review by jillbd
Oblivion: Stories by David Foster Wallace
5.0
On September 12, 2008, David Foster Wallace was found dead in his home, of an apparent hanging suicide. [1:]
1. I write the rest of this review as one of DFW’s trademark footnotes, because, in a sense, that one line sums up my full experience with this collection, and the rest is just a footnote.
It took me a while to warm up to this collection, I believe, in hindsight, because of my upset over DFW’s suicide and this being (at the time) the last of his books I had left to experience. Now I’m looking forward to This is Water, which now becomes my de facto Our Mutual Friend.
In the middle of reading “Good Old Neon,” I thought I finally understood him. Why he did what he did, how he felt about himself, the constant struggle between experience and self-judgment. The end of the story takes a turn, of course, and I’m left wondering even more. How many layers of ironic detachment, bona fide pain, ironic detachment, very real medical-grade depression, ironic detachment, etc., is one person allowed? Maybe the reality is that he wrote about suicide so often that it became normative for him, even as the narrator of “Good Old Neon” urges his former, corporeal self to change his mind.
“It won’t hurt, though. It will be loud, and you’ll feel things, but they’ll go through you so fast that you won’t even realize you’re feeling them… The reality is that dying isn’t bad, but it takes forever.”
The title story, “Oblivion,” about a ‘very sensitive’ pedophile and his utterly banal battle with his wife over whether or not he is waking her up with his snoring, found me finally, completely immersed in DFW’s singular, perfect writing. Which found me observing myself reading one of the last DFW stories I will ever read for the first time.
1. I write the rest of this review as one of DFW’s trademark footnotes, because, in a sense, that one line sums up my full experience with this collection, and the rest is just a footnote.
It took me a while to warm up to this collection, I believe, in hindsight, because of my upset over DFW’s suicide and this being (at the time) the last of his books I had left to experience. Now I’m looking forward to This is Water, which now becomes my de facto Our Mutual Friend.
In the middle of reading “Good Old Neon,” I thought I finally understood him. Why he did what he did, how he felt about himself, the constant struggle between experience and self-judgment. The end of the story takes a turn, of course, and I’m left wondering even more. How many layers of ironic detachment, bona fide pain, ironic detachment, very real medical-grade depression, ironic detachment, etc., is one person allowed? Maybe the reality is that he wrote about suicide so often that it became normative for him, even as the narrator of “Good Old Neon” urges his former, corporeal self to change his mind.
“It won’t hurt, though. It will be loud, and you’ll feel things, but they’ll go through you so fast that you won’t even realize you’re feeling them… The reality is that dying isn’t bad, but it takes forever.”
The title story, “Oblivion,” about a ‘very sensitive’ pedophile and his utterly banal battle with his wife over whether or not he is waking her up with his snoring, found me finally, completely immersed in DFW’s singular, perfect writing. Which found me observing myself reading one of the last DFW stories I will ever read for the first time.