@article{ref1,
title="Against Trauma: Boredom and Obsession in David Foster Wallace's Oblivion",
journal="Literature and medicine",
year="2021",
author="Mayo, Rob",
volume="39",
number="2",
pages="333-350",
abstract="This essay examines two short stories by David Foster Wallace from his final collection, Oblivion. Both are narratives of violent events (a suicide in &quot;Good Old Neon&quot; and a school shooting in &quot;The Soul is Not a Smithy&quot;), and in each case the narrator comes into conflict with the medical authorities diagnosing them. Wallace's writing of this period has been identified by critic Thomas Tracey as &quot;representations of trauma,&quot; a reading borne out by the stories' temporal fragmentation and narrative lacunae. I argue that these tropes of trauma writing are deployed ironically, and highlight instances in each story wherein trauma is undermined as an explanatory narrative of the protagonists' suffering. Such a reading not only opens up new avenues in Wallace studies but also raises important questions surrounding medical diagnosis and the value of patient narrative, even a misinformed one, as a diagnostic tool.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0278-9671",
doi="10.1353/lm.2021.0027",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lm.2021.0027"
}