Mister Squishy, c'est moi: David Foster Wallace's Oblivion

TL;DR

Kiki Benzon's 2004 electronic book review essay on Oblivion, Wallace's third story collection — a sympathetic, sharply written review whose relevance to this archive is thematic and continuous rather than IJ-specific. Benzon reads Oblivion as Wallace's "most penetrating, disquieting and altogether kick-ass compilation to date," organized around "the fraudulence paradox" ("Life is fake and empty, but we go on living it as if it weren’t") and around a covert didacticism about how one might live "in spite of it" with "a modicum of happiness." She locates Oblivion on the same trajectory as IJ and Brief Interviews — Wallace representing "basic human fears of mediocrity, unknowability and insignificance" — but sees the later book as more "porous," its forms currents that engulf the reader rather than closed proof-circuits. She reads the collection as the fruition of the literary program Wallace announced in the 1993 McCaffery interview: new writing should reflect "real aspects of real experiences," and Oblivion's "sentimentalism" a "breath of fresh fictional air" after so much parody and ironicism. A useful dated attestation of the irony-to-sincerity thesis reaching Wallace's late fiction — useful to the archive mainly as one end of the Mister Squishy / new-sincerity line.

Key claims

• IJ as touchstone. Wallace is placed by his prior work: "his massive, polyphonic novel Infinite Jest (1996)" and "the spiraling Infinite Jest" — representing "basic human fears of mediocrity, unknowability and insignificance with uncanny perspicacity and linguistic cunning." IJ is invoked to establish the through-line, not analysed.
• The fraudulence paradox. Oblivion's organizing figure, "what one moribund character calls 'the fraudulence paradox'": "Life is fake and empty, but we go on living it as if it weren’t." Not emancipation from the paradox but existence "in spite of it," "with a modicum of happiness."
• The new-sincerity fruition. The literary imperatives Wallace "put forward in a 1993 interview with Larry McCaffery" — that new writing should reflect "real aspects of real experiences" — "have come to some fruition [in] Oblivion"; Wallace's "sentimentalism" here "is, for this reader at least, a breath of fresh fictional air" after so much parody, ironicism and "look mom, no hands!"ism.
• Form as porous current. Where Wallace's earlier work often built "closed-circuits of form and theme," Oblivion is "relatively 'porous' (a favored Wallacian term)" — its structures "currents which engulf the reader while drawing her along" ("Incarnations of Burned Children," "The Soul is not a Smithy"). The ebr editors attach a link to Piotr Siemion's ebr review of IJ at this point.

Theories & evidence

THEORY: Wallace's late fiction fulfils the irony-to-sincerity program he announced in 1993 — didacticism about living in spite of "the fraudulence paradox," a return to "real experiences" after postmodern parody

• Crux: irony-vs-recovery
• Stance: advances
• Evidence:
  • [author] The 1993 McCaffery imperative — writing should reflect "real aspects of real experiences," against "image-fiction" and Pynchon-clone "crank-turners" — read as fruiting in Oblivion. [¶ Good Old Neon]
  • [text] "Good Old Neon"'s "David Wallace" entreats the reader not to "[mock] the attempt" (the bracket is Benzon's); the "fraudulence paradox" (147) as the collection's core. [¶ Good Old Neon]
  • [inference] Oblivion "surpasses Hideous Men," which "leaves its characters pretty much to their hideous selves"; the later book's "sentimentalism" a "breath of fresh fictional air." [¶ close]
• Notes: About Oblivion, not IJ — but a dated attestation on the irony/sincerity crux that the archive tracks across Wallace's career (the same crux IJ's E Unibus Pluram anchors). No in-source counter-evidence; Benzon flags "Oblivion" (the title story) as the weakest, reducing an indeterminacy mystery to a "do I wake or sleep" trope.

Themes

Irony and sincerity (the new-sincerity fruition); the fraudulence paradox (fakeness and going-on-anyway); form and theme (closed circuit vs. porous current); reception (an early, favorable scholarly reading of Oblivion).

Cross-references

• Pairs with smart-mister-squishy (the held Mister Squishy sentence-diagram note) — same story, a different critical entry point.
• The irony-to-sincerity trajectory: irony-and-sincerity and e-unibus-pluram (the 1993 program Benzon says Oblivion fulfils); Adam Kelly's new-sincerity line (kelly-dialectic-of-sincerity).
• The Harbach n+1 2004 essay on Wallace's late fiction is adjacent company (harbach-nplusone-2004).

Notable passages

Verbatim from the review (Benzon's prose; curly apostrophes preserved).

• "his massive, polyphonic novel Infinite Jest (1996)."
• "the spiraling Infinite Jest."
• "Life is fake and empty, but we go on living it as if it weren’t."
• The 1993 imperative: new writing should reflect "real aspects of real experiences."
• On the later form: Oblivion is "relatively 'porous' (a favored Wallacian term)."