Call number
FIC WAL
Collection
Genres
Publication
Back Bay Books (2012), Edition: Reprint, 592 pages
Description
The character David Foster Wallace is introduced to the banal world of the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, and the host of strange people who work there, in a novel that was unfinished at the time of the author's death.
Media reviews
Unfinished or no, it’s worth reading this long, partly shaped novel just to get at its best moments, and to ponder what Wallace, that excellent writer, would have done with the book had he had time to finish it himself.
'By turns breathtakingly brilliant and stupefying dull — funny, maddening and elegiac — “The Pale King” will be minutely examined by longtime fans for the reflexive light it sheds on Wallace’s oeuvre and his life.'
User reviews
LibraryThing member tonyshaw14
On the day of his suicide in September 2008, David Foster Wallace left lamps shining on a partial manuscript on his workdesk in his garage: he'd been working on his third novel for several years, and it was still unfinished. To his editor Michael Pietsch, Wallace had described his problem as 'like
The above cover is of the American edition, which is not the same as the UK edition. The American edition shows the design created by Karen Green, David Foster Wallace's artist widow, in which she incorporates elements from one of Wallace's tax return forms after shredding. It is much more striking than the UK edition, which was designed by gray318, or Jon Gray.
The novel is less than half the size of Infinite Jest, and the major theme is boredom: it concerns the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) offices in Peoria, Illinois, and a number of its new recruits. A few passages - intentionally, I think - are very tedious indeed, but by far the majority of the sections are brilliantly Wallacian: long rambling sentences exploring the minutiae of human consciousness, constantly qualifying, melding the esoteric with superfluities of everyday speech ('like'), laboring over the most detailed descriptions of physical objects, etc. Needless to say, there are many involved details about tax return processing arcaneness.
And, of course, there are unforgettable characters:
- David Cusk. David Foster Wallace had a sweat problem, which is why he is often (as in the photo on the back flap of the dust jacket of this novel) seen wearing a headscarf, although the reader assumes that Cusk's complaint is a gross exaggeration of Wallace's complaint: he's gets so soaked in sweat in the car taking him to the IRS that he also severely dampens the jacket of his fellow passenger David Wallace (of whom more below); in any class he's more comfortable away from a radiator and at the back where he can't be seen sweating; he tortures himself with fears of having another attack, etc. The hallmark digressions and/or qualifications are there, of course, both in the text itself and in the sparing footnotes (as opposed to the copious endnotes in Infinite Jest).
- Toni Ware comes from a trailer park background, where she was abused and from which she is irrevocably damaged.
- Claude Sylvanshine is 'fact psychic', meaning that unimportant details about a person - often a total stranger - just float into his consciousness, such as the details of an employee's 'mitochondrial DNA and the fact that it was ever so slightly substandard due to her mother's having taken thalidomide four days before it was abruptly yanked from the shelves'.
- Meredith Rand is 'wrist-bitingly attractive', although she's painfully aware of this, and can talk and talk and talk about the problems this (the wrist-biting attractiveness, that is) causes her.
- Shane 'Mr. X' Drinion (whose nickname is an ironic reference to the fact that he's not perceived as 'exciting') certainly finds Rand interesting - perhaps even exciting- to the point that he concentrates so much on what she's saying that he actually levitates 1¾ inches from his seat.
- And there's a character called David Wallace, who authorially intervenes in the ninth section (page 66) with what he terms 'AUTHOR'S FOREWORD', which begins (as does section 22) with 'Author here', and he wants us to believe that he's the real author, and that the publisher's legal disclaimer, saying that all the characters in the book are fictitious, (and any resemblances to real characters is coincidental), is in fact a lie, as 'This book is really true'. But then, some of what he says is irrefutably untrue about David Foster Wallace, the author.
David Wallace the character in the book is down as 'David F. Wallace' at the IRS, and as a GS-9 he's a pretty low-grade employee, although he's confused with another recruit - another David F. Wallace who will start the following day, although he's a much higher status GS-13. But although the GS-9 (David Foster Wallace) has a different second name to the GS-13 (David Francis Wallace), the IRS only recognizes the middle initial, leading to the GS-9 receiving a preferential greeting from Chahla Neti-Neti: a blowjob.
Not all of the parts of the book sparkle with wit, and under the circumstances it definitely can't be expected to hold together wonderfully. But all the same, there are moments in it equal to any other moment in DFW's previous work. It was therefore a very good decision to publish this. It's just such a pity that there'll be no more to come
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wrestling sheets of balsa wood in a high wind'. No doubt Pietsch recalled this phrase only too well when charged with the task of editing the chapters on the desk, and working them - along with much more work in progress - into something like a novel. The above cover is of the American edition, which is not the same as the UK edition. The American edition shows the design created by Karen Green, David Foster Wallace's artist widow, in which she incorporates elements from one of Wallace's tax return forms after shredding. It is much more striking than the UK edition, which was designed by gray318, or Jon Gray.
The novel is less than half the size of Infinite Jest, and the major theme is boredom: it concerns the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) offices in Peoria, Illinois, and a number of its new recruits. A few passages - intentionally, I think - are very tedious indeed, but by far the majority of the sections are brilliantly Wallacian: long rambling sentences exploring the minutiae of human consciousness, constantly qualifying, melding the esoteric with superfluities of everyday speech ('like'), laboring over the most detailed descriptions of physical objects, etc. Needless to say, there are many involved details about tax return processing arcaneness.
And, of course, there are unforgettable characters:
- David Cusk. David Foster Wallace had a sweat problem, which is why he is often (as in the photo on the back flap of the dust jacket of this novel) seen wearing a headscarf, although the reader assumes that Cusk's complaint is a gross exaggeration of Wallace's complaint: he's gets so soaked in sweat in the car taking him to the IRS that he also severely dampens the jacket of his fellow passenger David Wallace (of whom more below); in any class he's more comfortable away from a radiator and at the back where he can't be seen sweating; he tortures himself with fears of having another attack, etc. The hallmark digressions and/or qualifications are there, of course, both in the text itself and in the sparing footnotes (as opposed to the copious endnotes in Infinite Jest).
- Toni Ware comes from a trailer park background, where she was abused and from which she is irrevocably damaged.
- Claude Sylvanshine is 'fact psychic', meaning that unimportant details about a person - often a total stranger - just float into his consciousness, such as the details of an employee's 'mitochondrial DNA and the fact that it was ever so slightly substandard due to her mother's having taken thalidomide four days before it was abruptly yanked from the shelves'.
- Meredith Rand is 'wrist-bitingly attractive', although she's painfully aware of this, and can talk and talk and talk about the problems this (the wrist-biting attractiveness, that is) causes her.
- Shane 'Mr. X' Drinion (whose nickname is an ironic reference to the fact that he's not perceived as 'exciting') certainly finds Rand interesting - perhaps even exciting- to the point that he concentrates so much on what she's saying that he actually levitates 1¾ inches from his seat.
- And there's a character called David Wallace, who authorially intervenes in the ninth section (page 66) with what he terms 'AUTHOR'S FOREWORD', which begins (as does section 22) with 'Author here', and he wants us to believe that he's the real author, and that the publisher's legal disclaimer, saying that all the characters in the book are fictitious, (and any resemblances to real characters is coincidental), is in fact a lie, as 'This book is really true'. But then, some of what he says is irrefutably untrue about David Foster Wallace, the author.
David Wallace the character in the book is down as 'David F. Wallace' at the IRS, and as a GS-9 he's a pretty low-grade employee, although he's confused with another recruit - another David F. Wallace who will start the following day, although he's a much higher status GS-13. But although the GS-9 (David Foster Wallace) has a different second name to the GS-13 (David Francis Wallace), the IRS only recognizes the middle initial, leading to the GS-9 receiving a preferential greeting from Chahla Neti-Neti: a blowjob.
Not all of the parts of the book sparkle with wit, and under the circumstances it definitely can't be expected to hold together wonderfully. But all the same, there are moments in it equal to any other moment in DFW's previous work. It was therefore a very good decision to publish this. It's just such a pity that there'll be no more to come
Show Less
LibraryThing member edwinbcn
I thought I was not going to like this novel, but bought it anyway, to keep up with what's going on in American letters, where David Foster Wallace is clearly seen as an author of major importance. Despite it's fragmentary nature, and the fact that the book is not finished, I did come away with the
The published version of The pale king does not exactly present a unity. While some parts are clearly related to, what I would call the main fragments, there are many other parts, sometimes even only a few paragraphs, which are either vaguely connected or must be assumed to be in their correct position, without being of any help to the reader in making sense of the work as a whole. In a work executed, revised and proofread by the author, one would expect such perfect constellation of all parts, but David Foster Wallace did not live to see the book through those stages. Nonetheless, I have faith in the work of his editor, using the author's notes, outlines, drafts, etc to come to this near-final version.
The main fragments, some of which appeared as magazine publications tell an upsetting story, which seems to be autobiographical. The author, appearing as "the author" in the book, addresses the reader presenting an elaborate argument by which fiction and non-fiction in the novel are inverted, suggesting that the legal disclaimer, which states that any semblances in the novel to reality are unfounded, is in itself a piece of fiction. This humourous section -- how true often enough! -- the intervention of the author, whether to be considered as a postmodern ploy or not, or the general assertion that readers should not confuse reality with the "reality in the novel", the fact remains that the David F. Wallace in the novel bears striking resemblance to the David Foster Wallace, the author. Incidentally, there are two other characters, appearing in other fragments as David F. Wallace, who represent two different characters, who may or not be related to the character of that name in the main fragments, calling the hallucinatory ordeal of Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin to mind in Dostoevsky's The double.
Large parts of the novel, in many of the interrelated fragments, is set to take place in the work environment of the IRS, a large, grey, bureaucratic organization, reminiscent of Kafka's novels. A lot can be learned about this vast, all-encompassing environment, peopled by a large variety of characters, from all walks of life. This setting could be a metaphor for the dehumanized office work environment, in which the majority of our modern-day work force is entrapped, or the state of depression in particular, or possibly both.
The main fragment describes how the main character came to join the IRS. This choice is motivated by various biographical events, the earliest of which is the "life-changing kind of event" (p. 172) in late 1977, -- traumatic loss of his father in an accident.
The "choice" of a career in the IRS is at various stages described with a great deal of irony, which makes the reader feel it is more of a kind of fate, rather than a choice, and even in that aspect there are circumstances, which make it very likely that the IRS must be read as standing for something quite different. For example, on page 176, we read that "the fact is that there are probably just certain kinds of people who are drawn to a career in the IRS. People who are (...) 'called to account'". In the same paragraph, he concludes that he had those "features and characteristics" which singled him out for a career in the IRS. The next paragraph described his drug abuse as a reason for “how {he} got there” (p. 177), and following pages through p. 185 tell about the character’s drugs usage and psychedelic experiences from smoking pot to Obetrol and Cylert.
There are other parts in the fragments where work in the IRS and the outside are described in an unnatural way, which creates the feeling that the IRS environment represents safety, while the outside world is threatening, causing feelings of uncertainty and doubt ( p. 227).
There are other places where the main character experiences odd sensations of inversion between reality and fiction, or “real life” and a “real-life show”, fantastically highlighted by the author’s play with typography on page 222 where the main character has an epiphany over the degrees of reality represented by the announcement “you are watching As The World Turns” versus “you are watching As The World Turns”.
Any experienced reader knows the adagio not to take for granted that what happens in the novel should not be taken as autobiographical reality referring to the author, even if the main character in the novel has the same name as the author. On the other hand, only God creates “out of nothing”, and therefore artists must get their ideas somewhere, although they will deny that, and hide behind legal disclaimers on the colophon page.
A very impressive and profound novel, if only a fragment.
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feeling of having read a monumental fragment.The published version of The pale king does not exactly present a unity. While some parts are clearly related to, what I would call the main fragments, there are many other parts, sometimes even only a few paragraphs, which are either vaguely connected or must be assumed to be in their correct position, without being of any help to the reader in making sense of the work as a whole. In a work executed, revised and proofread by the author, one would expect such perfect constellation of all parts, but David Foster Wallace did not live to see the book through those stages. Nonetheless, I have faith in the work of his editor, using the author's notes, outlines, drafts, etc to come to this near-final version.
The main fragments, some of which appeared as magazine publications tell an upsetting story, which seems to be autobiographical. The author, appearing as "the author" in the book, addresses the reader presenting an elaborate argument by which fiction and non-fiction in the novel are inverted, suggesting that the legal disclaimer, which states that any semblances in the novel to reality are unfounded, is in itself a piece of fiction. This humourous section -- how true often enough! -- the intervention of the author, whether to be considered as a postmodern ploy or not, or the general assertion that readers should not confuse reality with the "reality in the novel", the fact remains that the David F. Wallace in the novel bears striking resemblance to the David Foster Wallace, the author. Incidentally, there are two other characters, appearing in other fragments as David F. Wallace, who represent two different characters, who may or not be related to the character of that name in the main fragments, calling the hallucinatory ordeal of Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin to mind in Dostoevsky's The double.
Large parts of the novel, in many of the interrelated fragments, is set to take place in the work environment of the IRS, a large, grey, bureaucratic organization, reminiscent of Kafka's novels. A lot can be learned about this vast, all-encompassing environment, peopled by a large variety of characters, from all walks of life. This setting could be a metaphor for the dehumanized office work environment, in which the majority of our modern-day work force is entrapped, or the state of depression in particular, or possibly both.
The main fragment describes how the main character came to join the IRS. This choice is motivated by various biographical events, the earliest of which is the "life-changing kind of event" (p. 172) in late 1977, -- traumatic loss of his father in an accident.
The "choice" of a career in the IRS is at various stages described with a great deal of irony, which makes the reader feel it is more of a kind of fate, rather than a choice, and even in that aspect there are circumstances, which make it very likely that the IRS must be read as standing for something quite different. For example, on page 176, we read that "the fact is that there are probably just certain kinds of people who are drawn to a career in the IRS. People who are (...) 'called to account'". In the same paragraph, he concludes that he had those "features and characteristics" which singled him out for a career in the IRS. The next paragraph described his drug abuse as a reason for “how {he} got there” (p. 177), and following pages through p. 185 tell about the character’s drugs usage and psychedelic experiences from smoking pot to Obetrol and Cylert.
There are other parts in the fragments where work in the IRS and the outside are described in an unnatural way, which creates the feeling that the IRS environment represents safety, while the outside world is threatening, causing feelings of uncertainty and doubt ( p. 227).
There are other places where the main character experiences odd sensations of inversion between reality and fiction, or “real life” and a “real-life show”, fantastically highlighted by the author’s play with typography on page 222 where the main character has an epiphany over the degrees of reality represented by the announcement “you are watching As The World Turns” versus “you are watching As The World Turns”.
Any experienced reader knows the adagio not to take for granted that what happens in the novel should not be taken as autobiographical reality referring to the author, even if the main character in the novel has the same name as the author. On the other hand, only God creates “out of nothing”, and therefore artists must get their ideas somewhere, although they will deny that, and hide behind legal disclaimers on the colophon page.
A very impressive and profound novel, if only a fragment.
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LibraryThing member hemlokgang
I think David Foster Wallace was absolutely brilliant. You might wonder how I could possibly give 5 stars to a work which was unfinished at the time of the author's suicide. Well.....read it. In some ways, as the editor says at the beginning, it is almost a collection of character studies....and
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what characters! Or, it is a treatise on the ability to immerse oneself in a boring set of repetitive tasks and to emerge successful and sane! Or, it is a commentary on the manner in which the American people have abdicated their responsibility to take responsibility for the running of their country! It is partially all of the above. The writing is witty, insightful, dark....who could ask for more? I cannot imagine what the novel would have been in its completed form. What a tragedy that Wallace suffered so that ending his life became a viable option! A loss to his family, the world of literature and humanity in general! Show Less
LibraryThing member dtn620
What can I say about this book that hasn't already been said more eloquently? I can tell you that it was, at times, laugh out loud funny, deeply touching, and sometimes confounding. It's a book that was far from finished (as evidenced by the notes at the end) but reads quite smoothly and is only a
For me (and many others), DFW's work explores what it means to be alive, to be human in this day and age. He raises questions about what is worth our time to think about, to entertain ourselves and the nature of the world. DFW continues to do so in The Pale King at a very high level, at times surpassing Infinite Jest.
I feel like this review is getting a bit hamfisted.
Let me just say that this book is accessible to long time fans of DFW and first time readers. The sadness and hilarity contained within should resonate with damn near everyone.
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bit more disjointed than some of his finished works. For me (and many others), DFW's work explores what it means to be alive, to be human in this day and age. He raises questions about what is worth our time to think about, to entertain ourselves and the nature of the world. DFW continues to do so in The Pale King at a very high level, at times surpassing Infinite Jest.
I feel like this review is getting a bit hamfisted.
Let me just say that this book is accessible to long time fans of DFW and first time readers. The sadness and hilarity contained within should resonate with damn near everyone.
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LibraryThing member hereandthere
The Pale King is a novel of the Internal Revenue Service. It is a meditation on boredom, and bureaucracy. It's a language dance. It is often profound and seriously playful. It's about taxes and tax collection and life in the prison of a large organization, in this case the IRS, or, we might just as
Because it is David Foster Wallace, it takes as a subject "art." It is fascinating because it does not seem that it is possible for the IRS to be fascinating, and it is a joy to watch an artist make something from emptiness.
It takes also as its subject "the author": David Foster Wallace is the author, a character referred to as the "author" in the book, and two separate characters (a GS-9 and a GS-13) suffering from bureaucratic identity confusion at the Peoria Regional Examination Center (REC.) There may be others as well.
For the first half of the novel the reader (me in this case, you in the case that you are the reader, and any other third party in the event that the third party is the reader), waits expectantly for the novel to begin to wrap back around on itself. You (she, he) wait(s) for a character to reappear, for a story begun at one place to continue in another. This does not happen much, and then it seems to happen even less. It slowly dawns on the reader (me, you, she, he) that if closure is the thing, one of us is going to be left feeling wide open and unbounded.
This not happening of closure is what happens when we read the well edited left-behind manuscripts of an author who decided to kill himself before he completed his novel. It slowly dawns on you (if you are the reader) that there will be no connection of threads, at the level of plot. Rather, at best, such connections will emerge on other levels.
All this beautiful crazy novel will ever be is a strung together set of meditations on how people cope with the stultifying boredom of the quintessential modern situation of life in a bureaucracy. And make no mistake about it, these chapters and chapter fragments are beautifully written, and totally worth the time and effort you may spend on them. This is a novel that delights in its language, in its humor, in its insanity, and its stunning reportorial authenticity concerning arcane IRS policy, procedure, fluorescent lighting, internal politics and human agonies.
Its incompleteness is enough to make one angry at David Foster Wallace and his inability to go on living long enough to complete this vision, but what's the point? He had his demons and this is what they allowed him to produce, and no more. I lived with this book for two months of evenings, and mostly enjoyed every minute of it.
It's a novel about taxes, the IRS and tax examiners, and some version of the life of David Foster Wallace. Read it. Laugh and marvel.
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well say, the prison of one's own mind. Sometimes it is delightful. Sometimes it made me laugh outloud. Because it is David Foster Wallace, it takes as a subject "art." It is fascinating because it does not seem that it is possible for the IRS to be fascinating, and it is a joy to watch an artist make something from emptiness.
It takes also as its subject "the author": David Foster Wallace is the author, a character referred to as the "author" in the book, and two separate characters (a GS-9 and a GS-13) suffering from bureaucratic identity confusion at the Peoria Regional Examination Center (REC.) There may be others as well.
For the first half of the novel the reader (me in this case, you in the case that you are the reader, and any other third party in the event that the third party is the reader), waits expectantly for the novel to begin to wrap back around on itself. You (she, he) wait(s) for a character to reappear, for a story begun at one place to continue in another. This does not happen much, and then it seems to happen even less. It slowly dawns on the reader (me, you, she, he) that if closure is the thing, one of us is going to be left feeling wide open and unbounded.
This not happening of closure is what happens when we read the well edited left-behind manuscripts of an author who decided to kill himself before he completed his novel. It slowly dawns on you (if you are the reader) that there will be no connection of threads, at the level of plot. Rather, at best, such connections will emerge on other levels.
All this beautiful crazy novel will ever be is a strung together set of meditations on how people cope with the stultifying boredom of the quintessential modern situation of life in a bureaucracy. And make no mistake about it, these chapters and chapter fragments are beautifully written, and totally worth the time and effort you may spend on them. This is a novel that delights in its language, in its humor, in its insanity, and its stunning reportorial authenticity concerning arcane IRS policy, procedure, fluorescent lighting, internal politics and human agonies.
Its incompleteness is enough to make one angry at David Foster Wallace and his inability to go on living long enough to complete this vision, but what's the point? He had his demons and this is what they allowed him to produce, and no more. I lived with this book for two months of evenings, and mostly enjoyed every minute of it.
It's a novel about taxes, the IRS and tax examiners, and some version of the life of David Foster Wallace. Read it. Laugh and marvel.
Show Less
LibraryThing member DRFP
Subtitled, "An Unfinished Novel," The Pale King startles by being so exceedingly unfinished. This isn't Kafka's The Trial, a largely complete novel; this is a very bare bones sketch of a work still in its infancy.
The Pale King should not be dismissed as worthless, however. Wallace's gift for
However, there are many other chapters in this book that are a single page long and don't bring anything to the story apart from obvious humour. There are also longer sections that hint at greater details and revelations but, due to the unfinished nature of the novel, are ultimately meaningless. The novel's two longest chapters are a combined 160 pages. In a book that isn't even 550 pages long those two sections account for over a quarter of the novel - that shows how unbalanced this work is.
Michael Pietsch has no doubt done the best job with what the author left behind. This book is a jumble of characters, storylines and random pages with flashes of brilliance. Yet the hagiography that surrounds Wallace should not cloud the fact that this is far from finished and a novel that exhibits the expected shortcomings of any incomplete work. It's a good book that I enjoyed reading, but it's no final masterpiece and anyone looking for insights into the author and his end can find greater illumination in his other works. Only for established fans of the author, it's still a great joy that these pages have been published.
The Pale King should not be dismissed as worthless, however. Wallace's gift for
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writing means just about everything he finished is worth the effort required to read it. Loosely connected though many chapters may be there are still some gems here - chapter six, also published in the New Yorker, is extremely tender, almost heartbreakingly so; chapter 22's one hundred sprawl is as interesting as any of the author's previous maximalist prose.However, there are many other chapters in this book that are a single page long and don't bring anything to the story apart from obvious humour. There are also longer sections that hint at greater details and revelations but, due to the unfinished nature of the novel, are ultimately meaningless. The novel's two longest chapters are a combined 160 pages. In a book that isn't even 550 pages long those two sections account for over a quarter of the novel - that shows how unbalanced this work is.
Michael Pietsch has no doubt done the best job with what the author left behind. This book is a jumble of characters, storylines and random pages with flashes of brilliance. Yet the hagiography that surrounds Wallace should not cloud the fact that this is far from finished and a novel that exhibits the expected shortcomings of any incomplete work. It's a good book that I enjoyed reading, but it's no final masterpiece and anyone looking for insights into the author and his end can find greater illumination in his other works. Only for established fans of the author, it's still a great joy that these pages have been published.
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LibraryThing member KelAppNic
Still reading. Saw that I started in April? I pick it up, I put it down. I read something else, or several something elses. Then I return. But it seems to me this has always been my process with David Foster Wallace. Is there any other way to read him, really?
August 13th. Finally done!
August 13th. Finally done!
LibraryThing member DavidCLDriedger
Moments of great insight and expressions around boredom and attention. But as a novel it was just too unfinished.
LibraryThing member David_Cain
The best and worst part of the Pale King is that you can see glimpses of the novel it would have been, had DFW finished it. As it stands, this is an excellent piece of work, exemplifying the things that make DFW such a first-rate novelist - the incredible attention to language, the tedious and
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delightful stories that always have a twist of strangeness, the magnificent voice that characterized all his works. Because it does not achieve the complexity that marks Infinite Jest, it is a superb introduction of his work, particularly for someone who isn't sure they have the moxy to read IJ. I could not recommend this book more highly, with a twinge of sadness that I cannot praise the novel it would have been. Show Less
LibraryThing member JimElkins
(This is a review-in-progress: notes taken on some sections as I read them.)
Chapter 9, "Author's Foreword"
Reviewers have remarked on this section because it's the one that begins "Author here." It's an interesting gambit, given that it only takes about three lines to see that the author isn't
Chapter 13
is on a boy who suffers from "shattering public sweats." Here the clearly repulsive ("hideous" would be the Wallace word here) symptoms and life of the hapless narrator are counter-balanced by the matter-of-fact tone that would normally be associated with clinical reporting. The contrast between this an the long passages on tax law are interesting: tax law isn't repulsive, but because it's treated with an analogous disinterest (in the proper sense of that word, as opposed to lack of interest), the "hideousness" of the sweating boy begins to appear as an unnecessary ornament. Real boredom, real dullness, can do without this sort of flashy, affect-heavy content. By extension, anything sensational, attractive, repulsive, or affecting, could be pared from the book if its intention is a species of "dullness." What are the conditions under which a chapter like this could be seen as a standout achievement? They would have to include readers for whom every apparently dull, but actually disgusting or embarrassing description is a source of shivery pleasure. When that isn't the case, the chapter can only seem inappropriately tricked out in a froth of campy body humor. A purer form of the same investigation would be a boy who had, say, a simple tic, or a slight stutter.
Chapter 9, "Author's Foreword"
Reviewers have remarked on this section because it's the one that begins "Author here." It's an interesting gambit, given that it only takes about three lines to see that the author isn't
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there, and yet a sense that Wallace is actually speaking re-emerges toward the end, where the "author" gives his reasons for thinking his book "has significant social and artistic value" (p. 82). That reason is that the book is an exploration of the massive "parallel world" of "boredom," which is also glossed as "opacity," "user-unfriendliness," and "dullness" (pp. 82, 85, 86). At the end of the chapter, the tone becomes especially straightforward, and it reads like an earnest, if informal, academic's theoretical musings. The theory itself is something like this: dullness is rebarbative because it doesn't succeed in distracting us from a "deeper type of pain," and therefore it is especially interesting (p. 85). There are echoes here of Baudelaire on boredom, Walter Benjamin on boredom, and Foucault and de Certeau on the everyday: that is to say that as a theorist, Wallace is on familiar ground. As a novelist, his species of boredom is what counts, along with what can be deduced about his reasons for thinking that what his practice, what anyone's practice, needs now is an unremitting exploration of boredom. Because without those two specific sources of interest (his sort of boredom, and his sense of the contemporary English-language novel), and aside from the many cultural differences that I'd like to say can be bracketed out, there would not be much to distinguish his motivation from Flaubert's motivation in writing "Madame Bovary." Both books were intended to be nearly plotless, without grand gestures of mythology, legend, religion, politics, Literature, theater, or drama. Both books were intended, apparently, as difficult but necessary feats, as attempts to get back to the "matter" of writing and away from all its distractions. For Flaubert, those distractions were "St. Anthony" and his other "purple" books; for Wallace, it was, famously, the pyrotechnics of his own early work, which is still carried on in "McSweeny's."Chapter 13
is on a boy who suffers from "shattering public sweats." Here the clearly repulsive ("hideous" would be the Wallace word here) symptoms and life of the hapless narrator are counter-balanced by the matter-of-fact tone that would normally be associated with clinical reporting. The contrast between this an the long passages on tax law are interesting: tax law isn't repulsive, but because it's treated with an analogous disinterest (in the proper sense of that word, as opposed to lack of interest), the "hideousness" of the sweating boy begins to appear as an unnecessary ornament. Real boredom, real dullness, can do without this sort of flashy, affect-heavy content. By extension, anything sensational, attractive, repulsive, or affecting, could be pared from the book if its intention is a species of "dullness." What are the conditions under which a chapter like this could be seen as a standout achievement? They would have to include readers for whom every apparently dull, but actually disgusting or embarrassing description is a source of shivery pleasure. When that isn't the case, the chapter can only seem inappropriately tricked out in a froth of campy body humor. A purer form of the same investigation would be a boy who had, say, a simple tic, or a slight stutter.
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LibraryThing member librarianbryan
I thought for sure I was going to write “David. Wallace. Is. Not. A. Good. Writer.” as my review for this book and just leave it at that. But The Pale King has its charms. The subject matter, mental boredom & the IRS, actually suits Wallace’s unforgiving cyborg gaze. His humor works better
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because of this. The paranormal / magic realist elements are creepy and intense. That the various sections are not tied together really doesn’t matter to me. We’ve been through a century’s worth of textural experimentation. That one novel doesn’t have all the dots connected is hardly worth noting. A book either works or it doesn’t. In this case, I suppose there is intense speculation due to the circumstances of the book’s publication. Really I’m not a big DFW fan so those circumstance really don’t get me excited. With Infinite Jest he took a lot of time to connect all the dots and that book is terrible. Perhaps what DFW needed most was an editor. Show Less
LibraryThing member amydross
"Central Deal: Realism, monotony. Plot a series of set-ups for stuff happening, but nothing actually happens."
This comes from "notes and asides" section presented by the editor at the end of The Pale King, and I can't think of a much better description of the book. I continue to find DFW both
That said, long stretches of this book really are pretty boring and a slog to get through, but the accumulation of petty detail is somehow necessary to the overall effect, and all in all I'd say it was worth the experience.
This comes from "notes and asides" section presented by the editor at the end of The Pale King, and I can't think of a much better description of the book. I continue to find DFW both
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compelling and maddening. I love the way he has claimed the mantle of "realism" and stretched it in strange, original, but nevertheless recognizably *realistic* ways. It is his mission to describe the world in terms that are fresh, off-putting, sometimes mind-boggling, but undeniably accurate.That said, long stretches of this book really are pretty boring and a slog to get through, but the accumulation of petty detail is somehow necessary to the overall effect, and all in all I'd say it was worth the experience.
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LibraryThing member eenerd
Incredibly verbose + complex, often stream of consciousness narrative fiction (or non-fiction??) This book is so...I can't easily express it. I felt like I could read it 10 times and still not get all of it. I ended up skimming in places where he went into the minutae of tax filing or into an extra
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long dialogue. But there are moments, and pieces, and lines in this book that are so amazing, so wonderful, that I'm glad I read it just for those. This was definitely a love/hate book for me; the good stuff was *so* good, but the bad stuff was *so* bad. You gotta hand it to Wallace, at least he didn't go half way with anything here--and I respect that. Show Less
LibraryThing member JeffV
The Pale King is a work of fiction pieced together from notes discovered following the 2008 death of David Foster Wallace. Editor Michael Pietsch assembles these notes as best he can to make a cohesive work. The result is a story, or an associated collection of them, that have no plot. What we have
The characters in The Pale King all work for an IRS processing center in Peoria, IL in the mid-80's. Everyone seems to be at least a little dysfunctional, perhaps because it's the sort of job those with a mild psychosis are attracted to. Through the eyes and thoughts of these characters, we learn much of the day to day processes of this fictional replica of a government office. Nothing is really surprising, however, the level of intimacy we are afforded to the lives of these characters keeps our attention, even when their lives and jobs lean heavily toward the mundane.
More than once, I was reminded of recent Steven King novels where the action is slight, but the character development intense. Wallace probably one-ups King in this regard; there is no climatic punch line that the story, however slowly, builds towards. Then again, The Pale King is about half the size of some of King's recent mammoth tomes.
The one part I decidedly didn't like was a chapter that was nothing but a birds-eye observation of a full office quietly working. Observations such as "David turns a page." Over and over. I hated this device when John Hodgeman did it; and I hate it when it crops up in Seth MacFarlane's comedy. It's not funny. It's not clever. There has to be a better way to convey routine tedium.
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is literary voyeurism at its finest.The characters in The Pale King all work for an IRS processing center in Peoria, IL in the mid-80's. Everyone seems to be at least a little dysfunctional, perhaps because it's the sort of job those with a mild psychosis are attracted to. Through the eyes and thoughts of these characters, we learn much of the day to day processes of this fictional replica of a government office. Nothing is really surprising, however, the level of intimacy we are afforded to the lives of these characters keeps our attention, even when their lives and jobs lean heavily toward the mundane.
More than once, I was reminded of recent Steven King novels where the action is slight, but the character development intense. Wallace probably one-ups King in this regard; there is no climatic punch line that the story, however slowly, builds towards. Then again, The Pale King is about half the size of some of King's recent mammoth tomes.
The one part I decidedly didn't like was a chapter that was nothing but a birds-eye observation of a full office quietly working. Observations such as "David turns a page." Over and over. I hated this device when John Hodgeman did it; and I hate it when it crops up in Seth MacFarlane's comedy. It's not funny. It's not clever. There has to be a better way to convey routine tedium.
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LibraryThing member Narboink
It may not be the embodiment of authorial intent, but "The Pale King" unmistakably conveys Wallace's unique voice and signature themes. Yes, it is incomplete. It is also a kick to read. Even though it tends to ramble on from time to time, there are plenty of great - even profound - vignettes.
LibraryThing member mrgrimm
Really should not have been published as a standalone novel. A series of sketches and scenes at best. Some great possible stories, but not a novel.
LibraryThing member BALE
David Foster Wallace is one of the true intellectual fiction novelists of our time. His writing is brilliant and speaks to us beyond its surface meaning. He reaches out to us individually and as a culture, and asks us questions about existence. What it means to us and, in particular, what it feels
DFW is a man of extreme observation. He is aware of every human nuance, from a finger tip with a worn out, discolored rubber (page sorter) moving through mounds of paperwork, to toes tapping out tunes of boredom or nervousness. Nothing is left out: skin pallor, eye color, a jutted chin or protruding forehead, clothing – the over all look to its individual components- and so on. Most impressively, he successfully relates these small features to the problem of existence. What makes Wallace’s perceptions exceptional is the dry, sardonic wit with which he portrays these itemizations. They enable one to laugh wholeheartedly, at ourselves and at the sheer disdain with which we face our existence on a daily basis.
I am in full awe of Mr. Wallace’s writing style. In contemporary times, I feel we are in short supply of novelists who are natural, erudite thinkers. There are many, but not enough. I wish Wallace knew how passionate readers were about his writing, and that it was enough to sustain him. Many praises to a great writer, one of the best.
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like to live as a human being in such an inhuman world. These are the thoughts that form the core of Wallace’s last great novel, The Pale King.DFW is a man of extreme observation. He is aware of every human nuance, from a finger tip with a worn out, discolored rubber (page sorter) moving through mounds of paperwork, to toes tapping out tunes of boredom or nervousness. Nothing is left out: skin pallor, eye color, a jutted chin or protruding forehead, clothing – the over all look to its individual components- and so on. Most impressively, he successfully relates these small features to the problem of existence. What makes Wallace’s perceptions exceptional is the dry, sardonic wit with which he portrays these itemizations. They enable one to laugh wholeheartedly, at ourselves and at the sheer disdain with which we face our existence on a daily basis.
I am in full awe of Mr. Wallace’s writing style. In contemporary times, I feel we are in short supply of novelists who are natural, erudite thinkers. There are many, but not enough. I wish Wallace knew how passionate readers were about his writing, and that it was enough to sustain him. Many praises to a great writer, one of the best.
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LibraryThing member BillPilgrim
I wonder how much better this book would have been if DFW had been able to finish it. It is very much an uncompleted work. Some of the chapters are such excellent stand-alone pieces that it makes reading the book worth while. It is kind of like reading a book of intersecting short stories. (But,
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some of the stories are quite long.) And, many parts of it are quite funny, in the DFW way. Show Less
LibraryThing member gergacheck
The Impossible Purity of The Pale King
The epigraph to The Pale King says it all: “We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed.” This could be the argument for the cosmos, but alas we find it in and made by David Foster Wallace’s final novel. It is performed
The Pale King gives us a hodgepodge, a complex conglomeration of thoughts, themes, scenes, characters, digressions and details -- all assembled to constitute the elegant yaw we are left with (“yaw” apparently being a word DFW became particularly interested in in this work). So while the multiplicity that is this book affects its multiple readers multiply, more or less serving as a possession for some indeterminate amount of time, those in possession of the book add to what this work will continue to become until it is neither handled nor read any more.
Oh yeah, and it’s funny, clever, sad, brilliant, satisfying, heavily stylized, fractured, engaging, entertaining, confusing, genuine, deep, layered, difficult, rich, impressive, witty, long, &c., &c. -- everything you love about David Foster Wallace.
The epigraph to The Pale King says it all: “We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed.” This could be the argument for the cosmos, but alas we find it in and made by David Foster Wallace’s final novel. It is performed
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by the cover design itself (at least for the first edition hardcover) with its impossible whiteness, having a texture that literally changes the surface of the book with every touch, speck, and slide across the table. Maintaining purity is impossible here. The materiality of the book absorbs almost everything it comes into contact with, making its eventual colored whiteness unique and specific to the possessor, just as the content of its pages is able to shape the reader in a way unlike any other work, person or idea. The Pale King gives us a hodgepodge, a complex conglomeration of thoughts, themes, scenes, characters, digressions and details -- all assembled to constitute the elegant yaw we are left with (“yaw” apparently being a word DFW became particularly interested in in this work). So while the multiplicity that is this book affects its multiple readers multiply, more or less serving as a possession for some indeterminate amount of time, those in possession of the book add to what this work will continue to become until it is neither handled nor read any more.
Oh yeah, and it’s funny, clever, sad, brilliant, satisfying, heavily stylized, fractured, engaging, entertaining, confusing, genuine, deep, layered, difficult, rich, impressive, witty, long, &c., &c. -- everything you love about David Foster Wallace.
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LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
A sprawling, messy, incomplete masterpiece. You left us far too soon, David.
Reread. The book has much to say - about the tragedy of boredom of modern lives, about how to survive the lack of interesting things that happen. Even in its incomplete form, I'm still very impressed with this book, and
Reread. The book has much to say - about the tragedy of boredom of modern lives, about how to survive the lack of interesting things that happen. Even in its incomplete form, I'm still very impressed with this book, and
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will return to it once again. Show Less
LibraryThing member akerr
There's not much of a plot, it's unfinished, but the set pieces are amazing and it's been edited well, considering what there was to work with. The footnotes are so tiny they can't be read without a magnifying glass.
LibraryThing member HearTheWindSing
This may be an unfinished work, but it's not imperfect.
Given its theme, TPK might as well be Wallace's response to my reaction to IJ.
(More after I finish.)
LibraryThing member pivic
Wallace had been mulling the possibilities for a third novel since the mid-1990s, even as he began the stories that would form the heart of Brief Interviews. The setting had come early, possibly even before the publication of Infinite Jest: he knew he wanted to write about the IRS. The agency fit
It's hard to review anything by David Foster Wallace to me, so far. His books are life-changers in a way that they skewer your mind and, at the least, force yourself into questioning your own ways but also those of others. It's a bit like listening to how Bill Hicks started reacting at the end of his life, when he received word that he would die from cancer: everything's tinged with timelessness, written passionately, carefully and with love. It's a very berth that doesn't really have anything to do with throwaway culture (which is funny, considering how much Wallace immersed himself in popular culture, especially TV) but with human emotions and the intellectual.
"The Pale King" was published posthumously. Having said that, the book had to be published. I think even Wallace wanted that, considering how he left the book just before committing suicide. And it's not only the best posthumous book I have ever read, but reading 10-20 pages into it, it was clear to me that the form and content was a clear, bested leap from "Infinite Jest".
Wallace in his final hours had "tidied up [his] manuscript so that his wife could find it. Below it, around it, inside his two computers, on old floppy disks in his drawers were hundreds of other pages—drafts, character sketches, notes to himself, fragments that had evaded his attempt to integrate them into the novel." On her blog, Kathleen Fitzpatrick reported that the Pale King manuscript edited by Michael Pietsch began with "more than 1000 pages ... in 150 unique chapters". The published version is 540 pages and 50 chapters. -- From the Wikipedia article on "The Pale King"
Still, it's extremely good form. And I can't imagine how tough it must have been to edit the book. Pietsch, a long-time editor with Wallace, must have done a terrific job. Wallace's notebooks from writing "The Pale King" are available online, thanks to the Harry Ransom Center, to help the reader see what was there.
In the process of writing the novel he came to call The Pale King, he laid out its central tenet in one of his notebooks: Bliss—a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom. --From D. T. Max's biography on David Foster Wallace, titelled "Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story"
To paraphrase Bill Hicks again: it's a ride.
You get the intimate feel from people inside the IRS, people brought there by a life-long drive towards the bureaucratic, presenting them as humans rather than something out of a Kafka book. You get luck, love, death, life, music, and details that made me cry. The first pages of this book made me want to laud Wallace above and beyond.
And the people. Always the people. While reading the book, I often felt "I wouldn't want to be any of these", but at the same time, I could definitely relate to the mundane and be touched by how Wallace made it feel beautiful. Filing copies and making copies and going through the same routine over and over, while looking at the clock trying to think of ways to make time go faster, or thinking about home, night and the day after, when you will, no doubt, clatter forward in despair, tediousness and silence around you while there are people scattered only an arm's length from you.
Wallace's inclusion of himself as a character who made it into the IRS by chance is better than imagined. The footnotes - oh yes, there are footnotes, and not endnotes - are here as explanations, comments, another world looking in and at the same time anything but pretentious garbage.
Who other than Wallace, in modern times, had/has the ability to write something this complex without making the reading boring and the financial aspects of being an IRS worker utterly uninteresting?
Just read this. Don't give a toss about this review, really. His words excel most I've ever read. This is basically human, touching and moving beyond my feeble attempts at explaining what "The Pale King" is about.
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well with Wallace’s Pynchonian appetite for clandestine organizations and hidden conspiracies. And like the tennis academy and recovery house in Infinite Jest, it was a world unto itself, where characters would be in charged apposition to one another. Wallace himself had had numerous small brushes with the agency over the years, usually involving trivial errors on Form 1099s that he or his accountant had to get corrected. These encounters touched off the same anxiety within him as communications from lawyers and fact-checkers. He had an idea as well of the IRS as a secular church, a counterpart to Alcoholics Anonymous in Infinite Jest.14 But, finally, he probably settled on the IRS for the most obvious reason: it was the dullest possible venue he could think of and he had decided to write about boredom.It's hard to review anything by David Foster Wallace to me, so far. His books are life-changers in a way that they skewer your mind and, at the least, force yourself into questioning your own ways but also those of others. It's a bit like listening to how Bill Hicks started reacting at the end of his life, when he received word that he would die from cancer: everything's tinged with timelessness, written passionately, carefully and with love. It's a very berth that doesn't really have anything to do with throwaway culture (which is funny, considering how much Wallace immersed himself in popular culture, especially TV) but with human emotions and the intellectual.
"The Pale King" was published posthumously. Having said that, the book had to be published. I think even Wallace wanted that, considering how he left the book just before committing suicide. And it's not only the best posthumous book I have ever read, but reading 10-20 pages into it, it was clear to me that the form and content was a clear, bested leap from "Infinite Jest".
Wallace in his final hours had "tidied up [his] manuscript so that his wife could find it. Below it, around it, inside his two computers, on old floppy disks in his drawers were hundreds of other pages—drafts, character sketches, notes to himself, fragments that had evaded his attempt to integrate them into the novel." On her blog, Kathleen Fitzpatrick reported that the Pale King manuscript edited by Michael Pietsch began with "more than 1000 pages ... in 150 unique chapters". The published version is 540 pages and 50 chapters. -- From the Wikipedia article on "The Pale King"
Still, it's extremely good form. And I can't imagine how tough it must have been to edit the book. Pietsch, a long-time editor with Wallace, must have done a terrific job. Wallace's notebooks from writing "The Pale King" are available online, thanks to the Harry Ransom Center, to help the reader see what was there.
In the process of writing the novel he came to call The Pale King, he laid out its central tenet in one of his notebooks: Bliss—a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom. --From D. T. Max's biography on David Foster Wallace, titelled "Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story"
To paraphrase Bill Hicks again: it's a ride.
You get the intimate feel from people inside the IRS, people brought there by a life-long drive towards the bureaucratic, presenting them as humans rather than something out of a Kafka book. You get luck, love, death, life, music, and details that made me cry. The first pages of this book made me want to laud Wallace above and beyond.
And the people. Always the people. While reading the book, I often felt "I wouldn't want to be any of these", but at the same time, I could definitely relate to the mundane and be touched by how Wallace made it feel beautiful. Filing copies and making copies and going through the same routine over and over, while looking at the clock trying to think of ways to make time go faster, or thinking about home, night and the day after, when you will, no doubt, clatter forward in despair, tediousness and silence around you while there are people scattered only an arm's length from you.
Wallace's inclusion of himself as a character who made it into the IRS by chance is better than imagined. The footnotes - oh yes, there are footnotes, and not endnotes - are here as explanations, comments, another world looking in and at the same time anything but pretentious garbage.
Who other than Wallace, in modern times, had/has the ability to write something this complex without making the reading boring and the financial aspects of being an IRS worker utterly uninteresting?
Just read this. Don't give a toss about this review, really. His words excel most I've ever read. This is basically human, touching and moving beyond my feeble attempts at explaining what "The Pale King" is about.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jphamilton
With Wallace's brilliant writing and the inside skinny on the inside world of the IRS, how could you go wrong with an unfinished book? Wallace just slays me, how he does what he does is amazing at times. There are so many story lines, characters, and literary styles racing around in this rather
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large volume that it's stunning that any editor even tried to put something together. I'm still flashing on parts of it, days latter. Show Less
LibraryThing member marti.booker
Awful book. Marked it as read because, after struggling through so much pointless repetition, considering it done made about as much sense as the editor patching this junk together and calling it a novel.
Awards
Pulitzer Prize (Finalist — Fiction — 2012)
Commonwealth Club of California Book Awards (Finalist — Fiction — 2011)
Salon Book Award (Fiction — 2011)
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year (Fiction — 2011)
The A.V. Club best books (2011)
Pages
592
ISBN
9780316074223