#477 Oblivion- David Foster Wallace

#477 Oblivion- David Foster Wallace

Oblivion is a paradox about a dream, or it’s a dream about a paradox, or it’s a story about a dream about a paradox. It’s one of those things, or it’s none of them. What it is, is another brilliant example of the genius of DFW.

Imagine a fight you’ve been having with your significant other, a fight that has persisted for months, neither side making headway and no chance of a resolution. You both firmly believe you are in the right and that the other one is just oblivious. Now imagine, as we all do sometimes, are sitting somewhere having the argument play out in your mind, all the anger and vitriol spinning and overflowing until you are about to explode. That’s what this story is.

The paradox turns out to be a Bizarro-Gift-Of-The-Magi-esque circumstance that has kept both parties from a good night’s sleep for quite a while. Wife is kept awake by her husband’s apparent snoring, sits up and screams for him to turn over or sleep in the other room. The husband is flabbergasted because he apparently hasn’t fallen asleep yet so could not have been snoring. After months of fighting they agree to be observed at a sleep clinic. Their analysis astounds both of them.

Then again, none of this may have been real.

Rating: 10-10-10-10 Total= 40

#353 Lauren Groff- L. DeBard and Aliette: A Love Story

#353 L. DeBard and Aliette: A Love Story- Lauren Groff

You could call this amazing story: Love in the Time of Spanish Influenza. Like the great love tragedies of Gabriel Garcia Marques, this one leaves you heavy with grief, and envious of the love lost.

Lodovico Debard is a famous man. “He’s a swimmer, but he is other things, too: a forty-three-year-old with a mighty set of pectorals, one chipped front tooth, and a rakish smile; a rumored Bolshevik; a poet, filler of notebooks, absinthe drinker, cavorter of the literary types.”

He begins giving swim lessens to Aliette Huber. She was a beautiful and accomplished young woman before being stricken by polio. Now in a wheelchair, this protected heiress hopes to gain strength, and other things, from her new savior.

“She knows L. from his book of poetry, which she reads when she was recuperating from her illness. She feels he knows him so intimately that now, freezing on the dock, she is startled and near tears: she has just realized that, to him, she is a stranger.”

Their love affair is careful but passionate. As their fate runs its course, so does the global epidemic of Spanish Flu, swallowing the world in death and fear. They hardly notice:

“Who in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness? Who listens to the reports of recent decimated populations in Spain, India, Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues, and poems fill the world?”

Notable Passage: “Their kiss is long and hungry. If they knew how often they would remember it, for how many years it would be their dearest memory, this kiss would last for hours.”

Rating: 10-10-10-10 Total= 40