Oblivion: Stories

Not a fan

I love DFW. This is the first collection of short stories of his I've read, it was as delightful as I'd hoped. As with his longer-form fiction, the stories are almost over-the-top satiric while remaining fiercely relatable. DFW demands your constant, unhurried attention through his prolix explorations of the inner lives of these characters (which are really just substitutions for the author himself, and in that way are quite like his essays); and if you aren't paying attention, be prepared to be confused by the delightful, absurd end-of-narrative turns & plot-twists: rewards for making it through the dense prose.

My favorite is easily Good Old Neon, because I think that's the truest insight we'll ever get into the exact nature of DFW's depression, and ultimately why he took his own life... knowing that adds an intensity that feels so painfully and captivatingly real.

Though the last story about the poop sculptures was pretty great, too.

“Good Old Neon” is worth the price of admission. I'm less impressed with the rest than I was the first time around.

Didn't feel like it achieved the feeling of being both individually great with each story as well as a unified brilliant sum of the parts like Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (the only other short story collection of his I've read) but still a treat.

Good Old Neon is a masterpiece.

‰ЫП‰Ы_ Schmidt had a quick vision of them all in the conference room as like icebergs and/or floes, only the sharp caps showing, unknown and -knowable to one another, and he imagined that it was probably only in marriage (and a good marriage, not the decorous dance of loneliness he‰ЫЄd watched his mother and father do for seventeen years but rather true conjugal intimacy) that partners allowed each other to see below the berg‰ЫЄs cap‰ЫЄs public mask and consented to be truly known, maybe even to the extent of not only letting the partner see the repulsive nest of moles under their left arm or the way after any sort of cold or viral infection the toenails on both both feet turned a weird deep yellow for several weeks but even perhaps every once in a while sobbing in each other‰ЫЄs arms late at night and pouring out the most ghastly private fears and thoughts of failure and impotence and terrible and thoroughgoing smallness ‰Ы_‰Ыќ

How this book is written! This is pretty incredible piece of literature. It need multiple rereads to catch all the cultural references, but that is not the whole point of the stories. It's a masterful critic of nowadays world and society, toxic family relations, etc. It may, however, be difficult to approach at first, being a bit overly intelectualized and not a straightforward type of storytelling.