An Unresolved Crossing: David Foster Wallace’s ‘Oblivion’

The essay unravels the structural complexities and ambiguities of David Foster Wallace’s ‘Oblivion’ (2004), providing an in-depth, linguistic analysis that reflects upon this short story’s intentional generic and typological border-crossings. The authors closely examine the challenging narratorial strategies adopted by Wallace, demonstrating that the American writer’s formal experimentation creates a readerly dizziness that raises interpretative and ontological questions. More specifically, they argue that Wallace invites readers ‘to inhabit the liminal space of being across borders’ (p. 235), to untangle the textual intricacies and, in doing so, to reflect on the porousness of those confines dividing wake and dream, consciousness and unconsciousness, serenity and anxiety. The essay also examines the traumatising gendered power relations of a couple, Randall and Hope. The sleep problems they experience are a means through which Wallace interrogates different boundaries, turning the woman’s oneiric experiences into suggestions of a potential sexual abuse that, never fully addressed, adds another element of uncertainty and disquiet to the story.