Word: oblivions
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David Foster Wallace writes so beautifully, is so show-offishly smart and understands the intricacies of human emotion so keenly that a reasonable person can only hope he is terribly unhappy. Which, if this collection of short stories is any indication, he is. His characters in Oblivion (Little, Brown; 329 pages) are corroded by a desperation to express their uniqueness: a marketing analyst who feels so inconsequential that he injects ricin into snack cakes (Mister Squishy), a homicidal substitute civics teacher whose students are not even paying attention when they're taken hostage (The Soul Is Not a Smithy...
...novelist. The best stories in the collection are the three-page take on a scalded baby (Incarnations of Burned Children), the nightmare of a sexually abused woman whose marriage has fallen apart because she and her husband can't figure out whether he's snoring or she's hallucinating (Oblivion) and Good Old Neon, which succeeds where thousands of 20th century novels failed, nailing the yuppie angst of being found a fraud. It alone is worth buying the book...
...directors and writers hired and dropped, the budget cut and restored, the story rearranged during editing--could land the film on the junk heap of historical movies. (Remember Al Pacino in his 1776 saga, Revolution? Neither does anyone else.) But, in fact, The Alamo deserves a fate better than oblivion...
...simple: former lawman + gunfighter = nascent police force, especially when the two stumble on a massacre-robbery perpetrated by "road agents" working for him. It seems, though, that Bullock just wants to kick his law habit and make a dollar, and Hickok, to drink and gamble his way into oblivion. "Hickok was acutely aware of his time having passed," says Carradine. "He had outlived his usefulness." Throw in abused prostitute Trixie (Paula Malcomson); Alma Garret, a laudanum-addicted lady from back East (Molly Parker); and E.B. Farnum, a hotel owner and Swearengen's beaten-cur sycophant (William Sanderson, Newhart's Larry...
...home one Friday night last November. "Mary Beth," she says, tucking her chin, locking her jaw and dropping a register or two, "this is John Kerry." Mary Beth Cahill knew why he was calling. The presidential candidate whom everyone had once anointed the Democratic front runner was careering toward oblivion. Kerry was about to fire his campaign manager and wanted Senator Edward Kennedy's chief of staff to take over an operation that was short on money, full of backbiting and left in the dust by the Internet-and-anger-fueled phenomenon that was Howard Dean. "So I showed...