Have we talked about Oblivion, the new David Foster Wallace, at all?

There's an insightful review in the current LRB: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n22/maso02_.html

That article started out very promising, connecting Tense Present's conclusions with his published output. Too bad I had to stop when the Oblivion exegesis began since I haven't yet read it.

That's astonishing!

Like easily the best thing on Wallace I've read.

I am not sure I /quite/ buy his take on the ending. But then: I am not sure I quite buy the ending people always give to Mulholland Drive, which seems a related thing. I mean, IJ gives a whole bunch of plausible narratives for the gap between end and beginning, and it'd be pretty harsh not to say that was on purpose; I think "a key" or "a twist" (Good Old Neon etc) is a misleading image when a writer is consciously choosing to close without answers, with a rush towards the light that allows and encourages wonder. I do actually agree with DE abt "being deliberately annoying" but I don't think the non-endings are really part of it.

A big part of the reason I found oblivion so powerful is maybe that you can sorta sketch out a stencil for a lot of DFW's ending, like where this complexity builds and builds until it attained some sort of absolute through just this, like a piece of paper so covered in writing that it's simply black. (The chalkboard in 'The Soul Is Not A Smithy' uses this exact image I think?). This happens in Forever Overhead ("Hello.") and it happens in IJ with that amazing line about the tide, and it happens a whole whole lot in the stories in Oblivion, that "clean white slate" in Mr. Squishy after all those nested & nested betrayals, that "which is good" in um, I've forgotten the title, I don't have the book here, the one with the beatles? And when you get to Oblivion (which is why I talk abt it being paced, as a collection), and you get to that ending, after all that complexity, and instead of all that you get this image of oblivion (that's elsewhere this friendly absolute/nothing) as so utterly, infinitely horrible, well, that's where the kick is, for me. And that's why I'm hostile to appraising it as a key, or a twist.

(I couldn't get past page 50 of the maths book either, even though someone explained Cantor's diagonal proof to me at a party this weekend and I thought it was beautiful and cool, so I increasingly think it's just not very well written, at least in terms of being a maths textbook)

Ooh: I have not opened that LRB yet, naturally.

(The infinity book was almost intolerable. I finished it but all the excitement I'd felt on anticipating reading DFW on Cantor/infinity was sapped. In addition to copious footnotage, he goes to town with non-alphanumeric characters and all his other tics.)

i don't understand what's so horrifying about that ending. postmodern fiction is bollocks.

i just finished reading this.

[POTENTIAL SPOILaGe of Suffering Channel]

Q: so is mrs. moltke an evil mastermind?

Q: what's in the other duplex-half?!

i know i'm going to have nightmares tonight.

i can't remember enough to answer those two questions, but i did think the suffering channel was my least favorite thing there, like the last thing in his other collection of stories (i mean, not 'interviews', which isn't really a collection of stories as such), because it seemed distended in similar ways. also "a 9/11 story" and "humour based on the mockery of obese people" are both on my list of Things David Foster Wallace Ought To Do Better Than.

i don't know if i even made it halfway thru suffering channel.

another reason wallace is a douche: cuz he left ISU to for rich socal preps at pomona. not that i blame him.

i don't understand your last line there.