Oblivion: Stories (2004) is a collection of short fiction by the American writer 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. In the stories, Wallace explores the nature of reality, dreams, trauma, and the "dynamics of consciousness." The story "Good Old Neon" was included in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2002.
Composition and publication
The collection's writing overlapped with Wallace's last novel, The Pale King, and many of the stories came from notebooks that he used to write the book and may have begun as sections of it.
Wallace first suggested a new collection of stories to his editor Michael Pietsch in October 2001. Much of the editing appears to have been completed by October 2003. Published in June 2004, the book sold 18,000 hardcover copies in its first year.
List of stories
"Mister Squishy" was originally published as "Mr. Squishy" in McSweeney's #5 (2000), under the pseudonym Elizabeth Klemm. The story takes place in November 1995 and follows a focus group in a marketer's conference room as well as the facilitator of the focus group, Terry Schmidt. Schmidt leads a focus group that is taste-testing a new chocolate snack, named "Felonies!", while a person free climbs up the building's north face. "The Soul Is Not a Smithy" was originally published in AGNI #57 (2003). Scott M. Morris, in his review of the collection, wrote that this story "may well be a masterpiece." The title apparently refers to the penultimate paragraph of James Joyce's novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in which Stephen Dedalus writes: "Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." In this narrative, 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 spends his time daydreaming and looking out of the classroom window. "Incarnations of Burned Children" was originally published in Esquire (November 2000). A baby is burned by boiling water. "Another Pioneer" was originally published in Colorado Review (Summer 2001). This story is a fable about the effect of a wise child, who can answer any question posed to him, in a Stone Age village. "Good Old Neon" was originally published in Conjunctions #37 (November 2001). Chad Harbach, in his review of the collection, called this story an "indisputable masterpiece", and Marshall Boswell wrote that it is the collection's "best and most celebrated stand-alone story". It was included in O. Henry Prize Stories 2002. The story consists of the monologue of a lonely advertising executive, Neal, who commits suicide by crashing his car. Throughout the story, Neal provides his psychiatrist with stories regarding his fraudulence, 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's #1 (1998). According to Paul Giles, the title "directly echoes" Richard Rorty's book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. In the 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" was originally published in Black Clock No. 1 (Spring 2004/Summer 2004). 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 to monitor their behaviors and determine who is right. "The Suffering Channel" is a novella set in July 2001. Its central protagonist, Skip Atwater, is a journalist who works for the fictional Style Magazine at the World Trade Center. Atwater is attempting to write an article about a midwestern artist, Brint Moltke (whose excrement reportedly resembles famous cultural objects) for the September 10, 2001 issue of Style.