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He's the POMO (postmodern literature) Diva! He's the king of long sentences that make up plus-size novels. He's the Leslie Fiedler for the X generation. He's David Foster Wallace and he's POMOlicious, the "Wallacefriscizzlesizzle"!
And today's American culture of extremes and "reality" programming, target hyper-marketing, "herd"-driven individualism, identity theft, and the epidemic of minor medical disorders feature prominently in the thematic backdrops of OBLIVION, Wallace's latest collection of "short" stories, following 1999's BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN. Infamous for his mind-melting 1,079-page INFINITE JEST (the "cement shoes" of contemporary novels), a fictional biography (with no ending) of a tennis prodigy and a lost movie, Wallace has made a literary career from the sardonic postmodern form, employed most effectively by Thomas Pynchon (MASON & DIXON).
For those unfamiliar with Pynchon and Wallace, authors who seem to write when they are possibly "on acid" with the desire of making the reader feel as if he or she is "on acid," it is best to start with Wallace's BRIEF INTERVIEWS or Pynchon's THE CRYING OF LOT 49 as initiation to this artistic style and brand of humor. As humble reviewer, I (the "reviewer," not the "on acid" reader) offer "style" and "brand" in the singular form because, at times, it is difficult to tell these two authors apart. Pynchon came first in the age of Flower Power while Wallace continues the tradition today. As in INFINITE JEST and his other works, Wallace, in OBLIVION (a book for dedicated fans of the author --- "fans" meaning readers who tolerate [or even "love"] sentences that go on for pages, few paragraph breaks, excessive parenthesis and quotation, lots of academic yet "hip" or snappy footnotes, and the other scholarly techniques normally utilized in formal essay, biography, and even in monograph forms), parodies an America so overloaded with corporate marketing and political media spin that the initial sales message of a brand of cola or allergy relief medicine becomes a parody of itself before Wallace's parody makes it to the bookshelves, like the Disney corporation banning a movie it sponsored and produced.
The story that gives Wallace's latest collection its name concerns Randall, an over-stressed corporate drone with a snoring problem. The snoring is the "tip of the iceberg" one might say, as Randall is shocked out of sleep, mid-snore, each night by wife Hope, who cannot sleep because of Randall's snoring. Shaken from "fourth-stage" sleep by Hope, Randall is left to lay awake for several hours by Hope's protests because he believes that she is not being woken by his possibly fictional snoring. Instead, Randall feels that Hope is having "night terrors" associated with "empty nest syndrome" as a result of her daughter, Audrey, leaving home for college, out-of-state. Wallace delightfully explores the mother-daughter jealousy brought on by age in the deteriorating Hope and the budding, nubile Audrey, for whom Randall lusts (she is his stepdaughter, not his biological daughter). Yet Randall is plagued by his own lust for the daughter because he fears (and sees in stress-related hallucinations) that Hope herself might have once been (in her younger years) the target of her own stepfather's misdirected affections.
The snoring solution? Randall and Hope seek the counseling of the experts at a sleep clinic, as Wallace pokes fun at the variety of imagined medical disorders that plague the American (Americans are even better these days at "complaining" than our brothers to the north, the Canadians) psyche --- peanut allergies, insomnia, depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, dizziness, migraine headaches, acid reflux disease, etc. --- and a greedy medical community that rushes to find answers to these "disorders" while the more critical cancer and AIDS go uncured.
In OBLIVION's "Mister Squishy," Wallace lampoons corporate marketing, advertising, focus groups, extreme workouts and dieting as a Chicago ad firm ponders the sale of a chocoholic snack dubbed "Felonies!" The oddest and most un-Wallace story in the collection is "The Soul is Not a Smithy," concerning a boy's comic book daydreaming and substitute teacher's mental breakdown in an elementary school. The story is too violently reminiscent of Stephen King's early, immature and overwritten "Rage" from the BACHMAN BOOKS.
But OBLIVION is signature "Wallace" and will delight Pynchonites and Wallaceheads everywhere with this satiric brand of storytelling that, in setting the reader up with an interesting, everyday plot and offering no resolution or ending proper
--- Reviewed by Brandon M. Stickney
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