December 5, 2004
- Oblivion has made the NYTBR 100 notable books of the year (may require you to register for free or use this)
- An extensive review of Oblivion by Kiki Benzon has been posted at the electronic book review, Mister Squishy, c’est moi: David Foster Wallace’s Oblivion (Thanks, Tom)
- As Oblivion gets released around the world we get more reviews:
- Wyatt Mason's review in the London Review of Books is one of the most interesting in amongst all the Oblivion reviews.
- The Age in Australia also published a new oblivion review.
- Time for another little update:
- Read DFW's review of Edwin Williamson's ''Borges: A Life" over at the New York Times (requires you to register for free or use this)
- Oblivion: Stories has made the Borders Best of 2004 Hardcover Fiction list.
- Reports have it that DFW's reading at UCLA recently included Incarnations of Burned Children as well as part of an unpublished piece about a tax auditor.
- The paperback of Everything and More is now available, check the link in the sidebar to the right for details.
- Oblivion: Stories finally goes on sale here in Australia next week, October 5th. If you're an aussie reader and have not yet imported it, it is worth the read. Keep an eye out in stores for it from this coming weekend.
- No DFW news today, just an explanation for the blatant Firefox button above. I've been using the firefox browser for months now, and I love it. It is about to reach its major ver 1.0 release, and users are trying to let people know about it through the 'spread firefox' campaign. If you're used to using an IE based browser I'd suggest you give it a go.
- DFW will be reading at UCLA on Firday November 5th at 7pm.
- An Oblivion review from Metro Pulse Online
- This story from Salon.com considers "The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories" and DFW's shorts within, three of his brief interviews. (You'll need to view an ad for a free day pass if you aren't a subscriber)
- Is DFW your professor? He now has a presence over at www.ratemyprofessors.com.
- Erik Marcus has reviewed DFW's Gormet magazine essay, "Consider the Lobster".
- New DFW essay available! As reported a while back, "Consider the Lobster" can be found in the August issue of Gourmet magazine. If anyone has read it, what is it like? I understand there are footnotes...
- One national English teaching conference and a huge workload sort of explains the huge backlog of Oblivion reviews I have yet to post. I am still here... aiming for a big update this weekend, Aus time.
- If you like E-Books, Oblivion: Stories is available in Adobe E-Book format.
- New DFW essay coming soon! Be sure to grab the August issue of Gourmet magazine where: "Celebrated author David Foster Wallace attends a Lobster Festival."
- On Tues 29th of June DFW will be interviewed by George Saunders at the Public Theatre in New York city. More Details or check out the table below (scroll down a little). From all reports the DFW appearances have been great, plus it emerged at a recent reading that he's now engaged, which is great news (and also the most personal and ickily invasive news this site is ever going to run (if I can help it) so... Congratulations, David, if you're out there somewhere!)
- Listen to a great new audio NPR interview over at The Connection. Note: Realplayer required.
- The Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus (Not yet published due on Aug 27 2004).
"This brand new thesaurus from Oxford, the most trusted name in reference, is the first to be developed by writers, for writers.
In addition to the more than 300,000 synonyms and 10,000 antonyms found in the thesaurus, each of our distinguished editorial board members (including David Auburn, Michael Dirda, David Lehman, Stephin Merritt, Francine Prose, Zadie Smith, Jean Strouse, David Foster Wallace, and Simon Winchester) has contributed frank, funny, thoughtful, and, most of all, word-wise mini-essays on words that they particularly love, hate, admire, or are just plain puzzled by." - More OBLIVION: Stories reviews:
- Oblivion: Genius Overload from New York Times online (requires you to reg for free or use this) by Walter Kirn. Have to comment upon this, a number of ppl have noticed that this is yet another review that notes the narrator of 'Good Old Neon' as 'David Wallace'. Slight cause for concern here, as far as I am aware, from a number of readings, the narrator is NOT David Wallace. Becomes slightly entertaining when dredge up evidence to suggest reviewers haven't even properly read the book they are reviewing.
- Facing 'Oblivion' worth the effort from Daily Yomiuri by Brad Quinn Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer.
- Two polished gems in thicket of words from Miami Herald by Ariel Gonzalez. (requires you to reg for free or use this)
- All in all, `Oblivion' should be jetted off to its namesake from Charlotte.com by Charles Matthews.
- Some new Everything & More reviews:
- The Neverending Story (in brief) over at SEED by Jordan Ellenberg.
- A Sometimes Funny Book Supposedly about Infinity. An extensive PDF document review of in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society by Michael Harris.
- Don't forget DFW in San Francisco tomorrow (17/6), scroll down for details.
- More Oblivion: Stories reviews:
- Number Cruncher from The San Diego Tribune by Jan Wildt.
- A kind of compilation review over at Slate.com by Ben Williams
- Clever `Oblivion' fails to stir heart from The Mercury News by Charles Matthews (Note: Requires 'free' registration. You may find this of some use...)
- Don't forget DFW at the Writer's Guild Theatre tonight! (See June 9 news for more details) Any reports welcome.
- More Oblivion: Stories reviews:
- Irony and Heart from Newsday.com, by Daniel Handler's a.k.a. Lemony Snicket.
- Stories well worth the work from Globeandmail.com by Ken Babstock.
- Wallace's all-over-the-map approach pays off from sfgate.com by Andrew Ervin.
- How about another DFW parody? Adam's entry for a Bonny Doon Vineyards competition, #9 of 10.
- Fan fiction: "A sort of continuation of one of DFW's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (the one on page 91)". Thanks, Carlos.
- Oblivion: Stories should be available in all over the place in the US now (and over the next few days) as we hit official release time!
- The NYT Michiko Kakutani (See news June 1st 2004) review of Oblivion has appeared in edited form in a number of other publications:
- Review in The Register Guard.
- Review at International Herald Tribune Online.
- Don't forget about the Oblivion DFW tour dates!
The first is on Sunday, June 13, 2004 at the Writer's Guild Theatre, 135 South Doheny Drive, Beverly Hills, at 3:00 p.m. More info and bookings
Scroll down or visit the Howling Fantods Oblivion Page for the full list of dates.
- A new review of Oblivion (by Bob Wake) can be found over at culturevulture.net.
- Luckily June returned today. :) Thanks, Brett.
- This New York Times (may require free registration) review of Oblivion: Stories is the least postive I have read yet. As a fan I find it hard to agree with some of the justifications given, but I must keep in mind that I am a fan and that this naturally skews my opinion. (I still hold to my statements that this collection holds some of DFW's strongest and most powerful short fiction).
- Playback has posted Stephen Schenkenberg's review of Oblivion: Stories.
- And finally, Andrew Sandley's DFW Page (which, along with Bob Wake's, was a big inspiration for this site) is back and sitting at a new address. Welcome back, Andrew.
- Time Online's, 'The Horror Of Sameness' is a new and positive review of Oblivion: Stories.
- If you haven't already noticed I've also created an Oblivion Page that keeps track of all the oblivion news and reviews online.
- Will Hickman has disliked David Foster Wallace's writing for quite a while. I'll give you a taste with this quote:
"Infinite Jest isn't a bad book because it's badly written, but because it's written for the wrong reasons, about characters the author doesn't care about, for readers he thinks are beneath him."
I don't know a single person that has finished IJ that even remotely thinks DFW doesn't care about the characters he created. Oh well, I guess you got your reaction, Will. Cheers. :)
- Keep a close eye on your local bookstores (if you live in the US) looks like some places already have OBLIVION: Stories out for sale! (Amazon US also says it is shipping within 24 hours, but my copy hasn't been shipped yet so I am unsure of the accuracy of the statement on the site)
- Oblivion opinions and reviews are starting to appear with greater frequency as we approach the release date:
- Village Voice literary supplement review.
- A brief, positive, mention in the fortwayne.com editorial .
- The Books has a brief review of OBLIVION: Stories up, as well as a link to one complete story from the collection, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (which itself is a retitled and slightly edited version of, "Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (VIII)" from McSweeney's Quarterly Concern in October 1998).
Not a bad little short at all if you haven't read it before, and certainly representative of the quality of the collection. Also one of the two very short pieces (the rest are much longer), of which the other is Incarnations of Burned Children (from Esquire in 2001).
- If you haven't been able to read DFW's, The Broom of the System due to it being out of print it's just about to be re-released on the 25th of May! Click here for details.
- This article over at sfgate.com discusses three new literary journals in California. Turns out that the March/September issue of Black Clock has something by DFW in it. The sfgate article notes, "There's a little too much of that repurposing going on for my taste -- Wallace's "Oblivion" just happens to be the title story in his June collection -- " so I've got a feeling it's Oblivion itself that's in there. Anyone picked up a copy?
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