Product Description

'A visionary, a craftsman, a comedian ...He can do anything with a piece of prose, and it is a humbling experience to see him go to work on what has passed up till now as 'modern fiction'. He's so modern he's in a different time-space continuum from the rest of us. Goddamn him' ZADIE SMITH A recognised master of form and a brilliant recorder of human behaviour, David Foster Wallace has been hailed as 'the most significant writer of his generation' (TLS). Each new book confirms and extends his genius, and this new short story collection is no exception. In the stories that make up OBLIVION, David Foster Wallace conjoins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite convolutions of self-consciousness - a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. 'Wallace's talent is such that you can't help wondering: how good can he get?' TIME OUT

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24846 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
'A visionary, a craftsman, a comedian ... He's so modern he's in a different time-space continuum from the rest of us. Goddamn him' Zadie Smith 'The heir apparent to Thomas Pynchon' Douglas Kennedy, The Times 'David Foster Wallace comes with a high

Stephen Amidon, Sunday Times
'With the exception of Don DeLillo, no writer better depicts the crushing effect of the information age on the soul'

Douglas Kennedy, The Times
'The heir apparent to Thomas Pynchon'

Customer Reviews

One of the best
Unless you work in market research, and as long as you like fiction, you'll be blown away by this. one of those treats that makes you realise we live in a literary sweet shop where you don't have enough time to read all the cutting edge, addictively thrilling fiction there is out there.

Beyond any other living writer.
David Foster Wallace has been likened (not especially favourably) of late to Zadie Smith, Thomas Pynchon and even Salman Rushdie, as an exponent of, and member of, a new literary type: the Hyper Realist. This apparent 'new breed' of author is identified by the myriad transgressions and surreal sub-plots, mini-essays and wild tangents that permeate their work, breaking up the traditional narrative flow and making the reader work especially hard for their novel.

What DFW actually does is create such utterly recognisable worlds, with overwhelming clarity and confusing details, as only reality seriously provides, that unless you are very careful you will be sucked into these stories and find your head spinning as you extract yourself and wonder whether it was just a book. His mastery of prose, his swift and accurate turns of phrase and lightning fast chopping and changing from one narrative thread to another is just amazing. Truly he has no real contempories.

In 'Oblivion: Stories' DFW has created a series of short stories, tales and vignettes to enthral and amaze. To read an author at the height of literary power, to be enraptured with stories of the everyday, but told with a use of language that would make any other writer question their own talents, then buy this book.

Good collection of stories
Oblivion is a short story collection by the recently-deceased author David Foster Wallace comprising 8 stories and 329 pages. These stories are difficult of description and, not infrequently, of comprehension.
The difficulty lies in Wallace's attraction to excessive verbosity, complex sentence structures, extensive use of parentheses and parentheses within parentheses and difficult logical and philosophical ideas.
Arguably, Wallace can seem to be indulging in intellectual games or verbal showboating. This hinders the narrative at times. Perhaps he is simply too intelligent to be a wholly successful exponent of narrative fiction, or too conscious of his intelligence, at least.
Nevertheless, I found this book generally very enjoyable. The humour and tone is reminiscent of Flann o'Brien and there are also echoes of Thomas Pynchon. The story Good Old Neon is an extremely interesting and substantial exploration of the problems of excessive consciousness of one's self, one's actions and one's impressions on others. In this story, Wallace's characteristic irony is discarded for a more serious tone. Though Wallace is a master of the ironic tone, there are times when it becomes too much. Good Old Neon is, I think, the best and most memorable story in the collection.
Overall, I enjoyed this book for the undeniable intelligence and wit displayed therein. I feel it would appeal to fans of the aforementioned Flann o'Brien or Thomas Pynchon. I would not recommend this book to persons of low intelligence.