An Unresolved Crossing: David Foster Wallace's Oblivion

Reading David Foster Wallace’s short story ‘Oblivion’ is a complex endeavor that requires readers to negotiate a generic border-crossing – between monologue and dialogue – and a thematic/typological one – between waking and dreaming. This latter contains a further embedded boundary concerning gender-related inflections of the self. These borders are not simply porous but lead to an unresolved crossing that does not end up in annihilation but produce an incessant movement. The analysis presented maps the back-pedaling across borders that the final page invites readers to undertake to try and diffuse the numerous stubborn elements that emerge. ‘Oblivion’ presents an invitation to navigate suffering, resistance and forgetfulness by inhabiting the liminal dizzying space of being across borders, neither here nor there, but both here and there handling events and emotions that are named through their being forgotten.