Oblivion: Stories - List of Stories

List of Stories

• "Mister Squishy" was originally published as "Mr. Squishy" in McSweeney's #5 (2000), under the pseudonym Elizabeth Klemm. The story takes place in November 1995 and follows a focus group in a Reesemeyer Shannon Belt Advertising conference room as well as the facilitator of the focus group, Terry Schmidt. Schmidt leads the focus group that is taste-testing a new chocolate snack, named “Felonies!”, while a person “free climbs” up the building's north face.

• "The Soul Is Not a Smithy" was originally published in AGNI #57 (2003). Scott M. Morris, in his review of the collection, suggested that this story "may well be a masterpiece." The title apparently refers to penultimate paragraph of James Joyce's novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in which Stephen Dedalus writes: "Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." In this narative, an unnamed narrator recounts his experience as a boy in his fourth grade civics class in Columbus, Ohio. The substitute teacher Mr. Johnson suffers a psychotic breakdown, which results in a hostage crisis, but the narrator spends his time daydreaming and looking out of the classroom window.

• "Incarnations of Burned Children" was originally published in Esquire (November 2000). A young baby is burned with boiling water.

• "Another Pioneer" was originally published in Colorado Review (Summer 2001). This story is a fable about the effect of a wise child, who can answer any question posed to him, on a Stone Age village.

• "Good Old Neon" was originally published in Conjunctions #37 (November 2001). Chad Harbach, in his review of the collection, referred to this story as an "indisputable masterpiece," and Marshall Boswell wrote that it is the collection’s “best and most celebrated stand-alone story.” It was also included in O. Henry Prize Stories 2002. This story consists of the monologue of a lonely advertising executive named Neal who commits suicide by crashing his car. Throughout the story, Neal provides his psychiatrist with stories regarding his fraudulence, deceptions, failures, and manipulations.

• "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" was originally published, in slightly edited form, as "Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (VIII)" in McSweeney's #1 (1998). According to Paul Giles, the title "directly echoes" Richard Rorty’s celebrated book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. In the story, an unnamed narrator recounts the story of his mother’s botched facial plastic surgery, which left her with a look of constant terror on her face, and the litigation surrounding that surgery. The narrator also mentions throughout the story his own entanglement in litigation related to his black-widow spider farm.

• "Oblivion" was originally published in Black Clock No. 1 (Spring 2004/Summer 2004). In this story, the narrator, Randall Napier, recounts his exhausting fight with his wife Hope over his alleged snoring, which she claims has been so loud that it keeps her awake at night. Randall protests, maintaining that he was awake and consequently unable to snore, while his wife was actually asleep. Eventually they travel to a Sleep Clinic in order to monitor their behaviors and determine for certain who is right.

• "The Suffering Channel" Skip Atwater, a writer for Style, attempts to write an article about an extremely shy and private man from Indiana, Brint Moltke, whose excrement reportedly resembles famous cultural objects.