Oblivion: Stories

The conflict between the subjective centrality of our own lives versus our awareness of its objective insignificance. Atwater knew—as did everyone at Style, though by some strange unspoken consensus it was never said aloud—that this was the single great informing conflict of the American psyche. The management of insignificance. It was the great sy

The journalist’s left knee now ached no matter which way he distributed his weight. Every so often he pumped his fist at his side, but it was in a tentative and uninspired way.

Although I’m not going to pretend that the specific incident wouldn’t strike most people as absurd or even sort of insipid, as causes go.

Moltke were now unquestionably breathing each other’s air; the Cavalier’s glass surfaces were almost entirely steamed over.

In my relaxed state, the sudden vehemence of her crying out floods my nervous system with adrenaline, cortisol or other stress related hormones, and the violence with which she thrashes up to a seated position in her bed—as well as a note of deep vexation or even hostility in her voice, as if this were an issue which had been silently aggravating h

as straticulate clouds in the lake’s upper atmosphere began to lend the sunlight a pearly cast that the conference room’s windows embrowned),

was SOP for Indiana storms, there were several minutes of high winds and tentative spatters, followed by a brief eerie stillness that had the quality of an immense inhalation as gravel clattered beneath their chassis.

(with college-age children and a wife who always appeared about to ululate)

The Sleep specialist (or, ‘Somnologist’) in charge of our case, a large, mild mannered, burly, heavily set fellow with a lead colored crew cut and what appeared to be an extraordinary number of keys on a promotional ‘Parke Davis, Inc.’ key ring—his manner pleasant in the neutral, subdued and punctilious way of morticians and certain types of Hortic