Oblivion

In the stories that make up Oblivion , David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal...

In the stories that make up Oblivion , David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity by delineating the office politics surrounding a magazine profile of an artist who produces miniature sculptures in an anatomically inconceivable way ("The Suffering Channel"). Or capture the ache of love's breakdown in the painfully polite apologies of a man who believes his wife is hallucinating the sound of his snoring ("Oblivion"). Each of these stories is a complete world, as fully imagined as most entire novels, at once preposterously surreal and painfully immediate.

大卫·福斯特·华莱士

David Foster Wallace（1962-2008）

美国千禧一代青年精神偶像和天才小说家，与乔纳森·弗兰岑（《自由》）并称美国文学“双璧”。

华莱士1962年2月21日出生于美国纽约州伊萨卡。父母都是伊利诺伊州立大学教授。大学期间主修哲学和英文，辅修逻辑和模态数学。24岁完成毕业论文，也是他的第一部小说《系统的笤帚》，引起轰动。1996年出版厚达一千多页的小说《无尽的玩笑》，被《时代》杂志评选为1923-2005年间最伟大的100本英文小说之一。《洛杉矶时报》将华莱士誉为“过去20年最有创造力和影响力的作家之一”。2008年华莱士因抑郁症在家中自杀，年仅46岁。

华莱士的很多作品极度晦涩难懂，却闪耀着天才的光芒，他的名字常与托马斯·品钦、唐·德里罗、乔纳森·弗兰岑放在一起，被视为英年早逝的稀有天才。