The stories that make up the "American Oblivion" introduce a bold, epic work in progress.

David Foster Wallace, the most charismatic writer of his generation, according to Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith, maps the human consciousness, representing in slow motion the unpredictable paths and dangerous turns that the human mind is forced to take in painful and borderline situations.

The anxiety of the modern man to meet the demands that he believes others have on him, the hidden paradoxes of love relationships, America and its obsessions shortly before and shortly after September 11, and the endless struggle of man against loneliness, intensified by the abundance of technological opportunities, are just some of the themes explored with rare humanistic sensitivity and caustic humor by one of the most explosive and talked-about writers of our time, a worthy successor to Nabokov, Beckett, and Thomas Pynchon.

"David Foster Wallace's gift lies in his ability to analyze characters with countless problems and incurable neuroses in a way that makes the reader sympathize with them and their paradoxical lives."
("Chicago Tribune")

"The liveliest prose writer of our time and the one who speaks most honestly about the human condition."
("The New York Magazine")

"Visionary, skillful craftsman, author with a comic vein... Wallace is so innovative that he moves in a completely different spacetime continuum from all of us!"
(Zadie Smith)