I don't know that I've ever been as rapidly overwhelmed by a piece of writing as I was when I read David Foster Wallace's "Incarnations of Burned Children" on my lunch (or maybe it was a smoke) break at work today. A mere three pages or so, the story hit me in a way that I would imagine a shotgun fired by God would. I simply cannot describe it. I re-read the final few lines at least four times, and went back to work in a daze, which I haven't fully recovered from.

If you're interested in reading it, "Incarnations of Burned Children" can be found in DFW's newest book, Oblivion. I recently checked it out from the library, and halfway through reading the first story, "Mr. Squishy," which dredged up all the horror roiling in the quiet corners of everyone's daily existence, I went out and bought a book of the man's essays, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. My God, I've never read contemporary fiction like this. Simply put, it is everything that literary fiction should be- no, fuck that, it's everything all fiction should aspire to, on some level. I cannot wait to read the reast of Wallace's work.

I'm also concurrently reading Omoo by Herman Melville, which is most excellent, and incidentally the source of one of my ferrets' names.

If there was a printed-word equivalent of crack, I would be on it right now.