Oblivion: Stories
by David Foster Wallace
- Used
- as new
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- As New/As New
- Seller
-
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 2004. First Edition. Hardcover. As New/As New. Octavo. Stated first edition. First book publication of these Wallace short stories. A pristine copy, clean and unmarked in an archival Mylar jacket cover.
Synopsis
In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity by delineating the office politics surrounding a magazine profile of an artist who produces miniature sculptures in an anatomically inconceivable way ("The Suffering Channel"). Or capture the ache of love's breakdown in the painfully polite apologies of a man who believes his wife is hallucinating the sound of his snoring ("Oblivion"). Each of these stories is a complete world, as fully imagined as most entire novels, at once preposterously surreal and painfully immediate. Oblivion is an arresting and hilarious creation from a writer "whose best work challenges and reinvents the art of fiction" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
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Details
- Bookseller
- Alba's Books
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- BN025105
- Title
- Oblivion: Stories
- Author
- David Foster Wallace
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- New As New
- Jacket Condition
- As New
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First Edition
- Publisher
- Little, Brown & Company
- Place of Publication
- Boston
- Date Published
- 2004
- Size
- Octavo
Terms of Sale
Alba's Books
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Alba's Books
Biblio member since 2020
Chicago, Illinois
About Alba's Books
In the mid '90s, Alba started getting calls from people who had a pronunciation problem. /
"Is this...Biblio...um...Biblio...die...sigh...uh?"
/ She enjoyed hearing the attempts. Her father's book business, Bibliodisia, was actually pronounced Biblio-DEE-zhee-uh. "It's a whole books and sex thing," she'd explain. "No, no, not books ABOUT sex. Books so awesome you want them like sex. Biblio plus aphrodisia equals Bibliodisia -- get it?" / Some did, some didn't.
/ Either way, her dad built a musty little empire with a sexy, funny, brilliant, and hard-to-pronounce name that boasted membership in the Midwest Antiquarian Booksellers Association (MWABA) and exhibited at Chicago book fairs such as the famed Printer's Row. / The way he puts it:
"OUR STOCK IS VARIED AND OF HIGH QUALITY, COMPRISED MAINLY OF HARDCOVER FIRST EDITIONS IN THE BEST AVAILABLE CONDITION FOR THEIR AGE. OUR PRICES VARY AND ARE CONSISTENTLY LOWER THAN WHAT YOU SEE ELSEWHERE, AND WE ARE HAPPY TO CONSIDER REASONABLE OFFERS FOR OUR HIGHER-PRICED BOOKS." (He's hard-of-hearing. Also, Cuban. Alba is Cuban too so she can make that joke.)
/ When he says "our" he means himself, his wife, and his two daughters. It has grown more and more into a family business every year, and now he's nearly ready to hand the reins over to one of his daughters. (Don't worry, the other one's a school teacher.) On Biblio, Alba manages Bibliodisia's inventory and sales under the considerably less sexy, funny, brilliant and hard-to-pronounce business name of Alba's Books.
/ And so another bookseller gets her wings. / The logo's a skyline bookshelf 'cause she's so the big city girl.
"Is this...Biblio...um...Biblio...die...sigh...uh?"
/ She enjoyed hearing the attempts. Her father's book business, Bibliodisia, was actually pronounced Biblio-DEE-zhee-uh. "It's a whole books and sex thing," she'd explain. "No, no, not books ABOUT sex. Books so awesome you want them like sex. Biblio plus aphrodisia equals Bibliodisia -- get it?" / Some did, some didn't.
/ Either way, her dad built a musty little empire with a sexy, funny, brilliant, and hard-to-pronounce name that boasted membership in the Midwest Antiquarian Booksellers Association (MWABA) and exhibited at Chicago book fairs such as the famed Printer's Row. / The way he puts it:
"OUR STOCK IS VARIED AND OF HIGH QUALITY, COMPRISED MAINLY OF HARDCOVER FIRST EDITIONS IN THE BEST AVAILABLE CONDITION FOR THEIR AGE. OUR PRICES VARY AND ARE CONSISTENTLY LOWER THAN WHAT YOU SEE ELSEWHERE, AND WE ARE HAPPY TO CONSIDER REASONABLE OFFERS FOR OUR HIGHER-PRICED BOOKS." (He's hard-of-hearing. Also, Cuban. Alba is Cuban too so she can make that joke.)
/ When he says "our" he means himself, his wife, and his two daughters. It has grown more and more into a family business every year, and now he's nearly ready to hand the reins over to one of his daughters. (Don't worry, the other one's a school teacher.) On Biblio, Alba manages Bibliodisia's inventory and sales under the considerably less sexy, funny, brilliant and hard-to-pronounce business name of Alba's Books.
/ And so another bookseller gets her wings. / The logo's a skyline bookshelf 'cause she's so the big city girl.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Octavo
- Another of the terms referring to page or book size, octavo refers to a standard printer's sheet folded four times, producing...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
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