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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
Yes, it's very apparent that David Foster Wallace's posthumous novel The Pale King is unfinished. And, yes, even so, it's still very good. But it's not until the end — editor Michael Pietsch includes eight pages of notes Wallace had written to himself about further character development and plot ideas — that we understand just how unfinished The Pale King really is, and also how good it would have been.
Reading the 550 pages we do have, though, is, for the most part, very satisfying. Knowing full well you're not reading a complete story — and even if Wallace had finished, how "complete" the story would've been is debatable — you concentrate only on enjoying Wallace on a section-by-section, page-by-page basis. You read in the moment, and if you can do that, you'll be treated to some of Wallace's finest writing ever.
The Pale King explores the stories and back-stories of IRS "wigglers" at a Regional Examination Center (REC) in Peoria, Ill., in the mid-1980s. This setting allows Wallace to explore the themes of concentration, awareness, and most significantly, boredom. Wallace explains in a short snippet of a chapter near the end (though it was Pietsch who actually arranged the order, since Wallace left no hints about how the material should be arranged): "The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable."
The characters here are vintage Wallace. There's a man who's so generous, he's actually selfish because "...other people, too, want to feel nice and do favors...that he'd been massively selfish about generosity." There's a man named David Cusk who is plagued by a sweating problem (hyperhydrosis), and only intense concentration on a single external focal point will prevent a sweating attack.* A fellow named Chris Fogle, whose drug use increases his awareness, likens his calling to work for the IRS to a religious awakening (more on this in a minute).** A character we meet at the end literally levitates as he concentrates on an incredibly boring story an attractive woman is telling him. And a David F. Wallace appears as a character. David F. Wallace also happens to be our narrator, explaining how he came to write the book we're holding. His sections are fantastic examples of Wallace's (the novelist, not the character) unique gift to make it seem as though he is talking directly to the reader; that reading is actually a dialogue, not a one-way information download.
One particular 60-plus-page chunk of Wallace (the character, not the novelist) chronicles his trip to the REC from the airport. Only a writer as imaginative and eloquent as David Foster Wallace could render a traffic jam in such a way that it reads like a thriller. This was one my favorite sections.
But back to Fogle, whose 100-page "memoir" is the highlight of the novel. It's probably the most polished, complete part and it's the one section where the themes of boredom, concentration and awareness all come together. Fogle tells us about his college-hopping and drifting, and his father's death after getting his arm caught in an El train in Chicago — which is one the better-written, most riveting scenes I've ever read in a novel. Fogle takes a drug called Obetrol which increases his awareness and concentration.*** The idea here is that by concentrating, one becomes more aware (enlightened?) and thus can deal with boredom. Or, is it that the more aware one becomes, the better able s/he is to concentrate, even on dull tasks, and thus not be bored by them. These circular puzzles, are of course, another Wallace signature — and one of the many things that make reading him so much damn fun.
As Fogle's story continues, the point he (and Wallace) is making is that dealing with boredom through some combination of awareness and concentration is a gift. "The fact is that there is probably just certain kinds of people who are drawn to a career in the IRS," Fogle tells us. But not only is dealing with boredom a gift, it's also heroic.**** Fogle, as a student at DePaul, accidentally wanders into a graduate level accounting class right before a final. The instructor gives his students a pep talk about their future careers in accounting, and Fogle is mesmerized to the point of being converted.
But these bigger chunks only make up a few of the 50 chapters of The Pale King. Much like in Infinite Jest — which, as other reviewers have pointed out, The Pale King is sort of a companion to; IJ dealt with entertainment, TPK deals with boredom — Wallace throws out a lot of pieces of stories in different forms and lenghths, and assumes you'll trust him to reveal eventually how they're related, thematically or by plot. But since Wallace didn't live to arrange these how he'd have liked, the connection to the whole isn't always clear. Some of these are fantastic. Some are as dull as Wallace hopes you'll believe an IRS examiner's job to be. For these smaller pieces, you really do have to read in the moment — enjoying Wallace for Wallace. If you like him, you'll also like most of this. I really, really did.*****
*"As Cusk discovered the year after his grades had jumped in high school, his chances of an attack could be minimized if he paid very close and sustained attention to whatever was going on outside of him."
**(This quote doesn't so much illustrate the point above as it is just tangentially related or is a set-up for the "religious" experience Fogle has later. I include it here because it's awesome and made me laugh and nod my head in agreement.) "Fervent Christians are always remembering themselves as — and thus, by extension, judging everyone else outside their sect to be — lost and hopeless and just barely clinging to any kind of interior sense of value or reason to go on living before they were 'saved.'"
***It had something to do with paying attention and the ability to choose what I paid attention to, and to be aware of that choice, the fact that it's a choice. I'm not the smartest person, but even during that whole pathetic, directionless period, I think that deep down, I knew that there was more to my life and myself than just the ordinary psychological impulses for pleasure and vanity that I let drive me."
****"Gentlemen, here is a truth: Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is. Such endurance is, as it happens, the distillate of what is, today, in this world neither I nor you have made, heroism. Heroism."
*****Of course, the alternate meaning of "reading in the moment" here is that I never wanted this book to end — not because it's the best novel I've ever read or because I was super attached to a character or for any reason at all having to do with the book itself. I read in the moment but because I knew as soon as I finished, I'd never read another new word from my favorite writer. That's just an impossibly sad idea to try to comprehend.
Reading the 550 pages we do have, though, is, for the most part, very satisfying. Knowing full well you're not reading a complete story — and even if Wallace had finished, how "complete" the story would've been is debatable — you concentrate only on enjoying Wallace on a section-by-section, page-by-page basis. You read in the moment, and if you can do that, you'll be treated to some of Wallace's finest writing ever.
The Pale King explores the stories and back-stories of IRS "wigglers" at a Regional Examination Center (REC) in Peoria, Ill., in the mid-1980s. This setting allows Wallace to explore the themes of concentration, awareness, and most significantly, boredom. Wallace explains in a short snippet of a chapter near the end (though it was Pietsch who actually arranged the order, since Wallace left no hints about how the material should be arranged): "The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable."
The characters here are vintage Wallace. There's a man who's so generous, he's actually selfish because "...other people, too, want to feel nice and do favors...that he'd been massively selfish about generosity." There's a man named David Cusk who is plagued by a sweating problem (hyperhydrosis), and only intense concentration on a single external focal point will prevent a sweating attack.* A fellow named Chris Fogle, whose drug use increases his awareness, likens his calling to work for the IRS to a religious awakening (more on this in a minute).** A character we meet at the end literally levitates as he concentrates on an incredibly boring story an attractive woman is telling him. And a David F. Wallace appears as a character. David F. Wallace also happens to be our narrator, explaining how he came to write the book we're holding. His sections are fantastic examples of Wallace's (the novelist, not the character) unique gift to make it seem as though he is talking directly to the reader; that reading is actually a dialogue, not a one-way information download.
One particular 60-plus-page chunk of Wallace (the character, not the novelist) chronicles his trip to the REC from the airport. Only a writer as imaginative and eloquent as David Foster Wallace could render a traffic jam in such a way that it reads like a thriller. This was one my favorite sections.
But back to Fogle, whose 100-page "memoir" is the highlight of the novel. It's probably the most polished, complete part and it's the one section where the themes of boredom, concentration and awareness all come together. Fogle tells us about his college-hopping and drifting, and his father's death after getting his arm caught in an El train in Chicago — which is one the better-written, most riveting scenes I've ever read in a novel. Fogle takes a drug called Obetrol which increases his awareness and concentration.*** The idea here is that by concentrating, one becomes more aware (enlightened?) and thus can deal with boredom. Or, is it that the more aware one becomes, the better able s/he is to concentrate, even on dull tasks, and thus not be bored by them. These circular puzzles, are of course, another Wallace signature — and one of the many things that make reading him so much damn fun.
As Fogle's story continues, the point he (and Wallace) is making is that dealing with boredom through some combination of awareness and concentration is a gift. "The fact is that there is probably just certain kinds of people who are drawn to a career in the IRS," Fogle tells us. But not only is dealing with boredom a gift, it's also heroic.**** Fogle, as a student at DePaul, accidentally wanders into a graduate level accounting class right before a final. The instructor gives his students a pep talk about their future careers in accounting, and Fogle is mesmerized to the point of being converted.
But these bigger chunks only make up a few of the 50 chapters of The Pale King. Much like in Infinite Jest — which, as other reviewers have pointed out, The Pale King is sort of a companion to; IJ dealt with entertainment, TPK deals with boredom — Wallace throws out a lot of pieces of stories in different forms and lenghths, and assumes you'll trust him to reveal eventually how they're related, thematically or by plot. But since Wallace didn't live to arrange these how he'd have liked, the connection to the whole isn't always clear. Some of these are fantastic. Some are as dull as Wallace hopes you'll believe an IRS examiner's job to be. For these smaller pieces, you really do have to read in the moment — enjoying Wallace for Wallace. If you like him, you'll also like most of this. I really, really did.*****
*"As Cusk discovered the year after his grades had jumped in high school, his chances of an attack could be minimized if he paid very close and sustained attention to whatever was going on outside of him."
**(This quote doesn't so much illustrate the point above as it is just tangentially related or is a set-up for the "religious" experience Fogle has later. I include it here because it's awesome and made me laugh and nod my head in agreement.) "Fervent Christians are always remembering themselves as — and thus, by extension, judging everyone else outside their sect to be — lost and hopeless and just barely clinging to any kind of interior sense of value or reason to go on living before they were 'saved.'"
***It had something to do with paying attention and the ability to choose what I paid attention to, and to be aware of that choice, the fact that it's a choice. I'm not the smartest person, but even during that whole pathetic, directionless period, I think that deep down, I knew that there was more to my life and myself than just the ordinary psychological impulses for pleasure and vanity that I let drive me."
****"Gentlemen, here is a truth: Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is. Such endurance is, as it happens, the distillate of what is, today, in this world neither I nor you have made, heroism. Heroism."
*****Of course, the alternate meaning of "reading in the moment" here is that I never wanted this book to end — not because it's the best novel I've ever read or because I was super attached to a character or for any reason at all having to do with the book itself. I read in the moment but because I knew as soon as I finished, I'd never read another new word from my favorite writer. That's just an impossibly sad idea to try to comprehend.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
funny
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Pretty interesting for being about boredom.
For those particularly satisfied with a book after reading it, may I exhort you: read it again a few years later. The familiarity of the material makes the characters stand out, and the sentences scream nearly toward sentience.
Thus was the case when I dove back into D.F. Wallace’s ‘The Pale King.’ I re-read it after nearly the same length of time as had passed between Wallace’s death and its official published date.
“An Unfinished Novel” is a title-cased epitaph sandwiched between the book’s title and the author’s name on the title page. It’s sad, apt, and misleading. Sad for the obvious reasons; apt w/r/t descriptiveness; misleading in that it might dissuade a reader to plunk down hard-earned $ for something unfinished.
While the whole of the narrative surely would’ve been longer, is the upfront negation not dissimilar to defining shooting stars as unfinished? We see its, the star’s, partial arc and we revel in its beauty. We wonder where it will end up. But beautiful is the illumination of which we are able to view the star’s parabolic scattering of reflected dusty light, no matter its length or brightness.
The epigraph explains the entirety of this book’s reading experience, from the initial heads up, the purchase, the pre-reading When/Should I Read This? Toil, the actual work of reading it, to the completion/fugue that both empties and fills the reader at The End. It’s the ability to be immersed:
And but so you’ve heard of boredom. That the book is about boredom. How to manage boredom. Sure, but don’t stretch ‘This Is Water’ as a Hallmark-ishly thin mask over the entire novel. The speech is great, but the clean platitudes are easily misinterpreted. In The Pale King, they are etched in stone, dealt with at times in detail so penetratingly deep that there is no wiggle room, so to speak. Alas, Wigglers -- those human machines filing, sorting, and finding meaning in various IRS documents -- try to find a meaning in life. I know the way this is going to sound, but I felt each character was as if they were at the end of the line in string theory, sitting there wiggling, with no real way to describe fully what is going on. Indeed, something is happening, but we don’t know what it is (do you, Mr. Jones?).
A character in an early section in the book is looking out an airplane’s window at a car on the road, driving what seems to be in slow motion from that great height. Much of the book reads along that type of scaling. From above, down a microscope. Scaling, finding meaning at whichever length befits the occasion.
Several characters are fully-fleshed out, such that one could place them in any type of scene and know what’s likely to transpire. Think of Seinfeld’s characters: you get to know them so well that when you see them react to the current environment, it rings so true you feel as though you predicted what was going to happen.
A pale, marbled, stoic Jesuit substitute instructor offers kingly words to those about to take a graduate level accounting exam, “Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is.” He mentions heroism as the individuals’ benefact of dealt with banalities, the mundanity that is found in far more happenings than simply accounting. It’s life. Deal with it. The theatrical valor shown in venues of entertainment offers a fallacious understanding about existence. No audience. No applause.
Whole stretches of the novel are as comic and sad as ‘Infinite Jest,’ and, in some cases, funnier and sadder. The cruel irony is that you could laugh to death reading this.
Thus was the case when I dove back into D.F. Wallace’s ‘The Pale King.’ I re-read it after nearly the same length of time as had passed between Wallace’s death and its official published date.
“An Unfinished Novel” is a title-cased epitaph sandwiched between the book’s title and the author’s name on the title page. It’s sad, apt, and misleading. Sad for the obvious reasons; apt w/r/t descriptiveness; misleading in that it might dissuade a reader to plunk down hard-earned $ for something unfinished.
While the whole of the narrative surely would’ve been longer, is the upfront negation not dissimilar to defining shooting stars as unfinished? We see its, the star’s, partial arc and we revel in its beauty. We wonder where it will end up. But beautiful is the illumination of which we are able to view the star’s parabolic scattering of reflected dusty light, no matter its length or brightness.
The epigraph explains the entirety of this book’s reading experience, from the initial heads up, the purchase, the pre-reading When/Should I Read This? Toil, the actual work of reading it, to the completion/fugue that both empties and fills the reader at The End. It’s the ability to be immersed:
“We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed. --- Frank Bidart, ‘Borges and I’”
And but so you’ve heard of boredom. That the book is about boredom. How to manage boredom. Sure, but don’t stretch ‘This Is Water’ as a Hallmark-ishly thin mask over the entire novel. The speech is great, but the clean platitudes are easily misinterpreted. In The Pale King, they are etched in stone, dealt with at times in detail so penetratingly deep that there is no wiggle room, so to speak. Alas, Wigglers -- those human machines filing, sorting, and finding meaning in various IRS documents -- try to find a meaning in life. I know the way this is going to sound, but I felt each character was as if they were at the end of the line in string theory, sitting there wiggling, with no real way to describe fully what is going on. Indeed, something is happening, but we don’t know what it is (do you, Mr. Jones?).
A character in an early section in the book is looking out an airplane’s window at a car on the road, driving what seems to be in slow motion from that great height. Much of the book reads along that type of scaling. From above, down a microscope. Scaling, finding meaning at whichever length befits the occasion.
Several characters are fully-fleshed out, such that one could place them in any type of scene and know what’s likely to transpire. Think of Seinfeld’s characters: you get to know them so well that when you see them react to the current environment, it rings so true you feel as though you predicted what was going to happen.
A pale, marbled, stoic Jesuit substitute instructor offers kingly words to those about to take a graduate level accounting exam, “Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is.” He mentions heroism as the individuals’ benefact of dealt with banalities, the mundanity that is found in far more happenings than simply accounting. It’s life. Deal with it. The theatrical valor shown in venues of entertainment offers a fallacious understanding about existence. No audience. No applause.
Whole stretches of the novel are as comic and sad as ‘Infinite Jest,’ and, in some cases, funnier and sadder. The cruel irony is that you could laugh to death reading this.
Just couldn't get into it. It is technically an incomplete novel so you can't expect a full story here. Lots of chapters just seemed to be random entries.
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
What it lacks in narrative, it more than makes up for in being a beautiful portrait of a variety of compelling characters painted in prose.
This is the most astonishing literary treatment of boredom I've ever encountered. That it is unfinished is, given the nature of its style and approach, a virtue.
I think the highest praise I can award "The Pale King" by David Foster Wallace is that it made me feel achingly sad. Not as a direct result of its content, but because all I want to see is a finished version of this book. As I was reading it and seeing the notes that alluded to a much fuller, more elaborate text, I could only mourn what might have been, written by someone who died too soon.
This text, however incomplete it may be, remains shockingly potent. While this does speak to Wallace's genius as a writer, it also speaks to the ability of David Pietsch, his editor, who deserves a huge portion of the praise this book has received. While I would have loved to see how Wallace bridges the gap between the more disparate ideas — maybe he already did, and I missed it? — this remains a lucid and relatively complete text on how we direct our attention, among other things. In some ways, it does feel like the counterweight to "Infinite Jest": "Infinite Jest" starts with separate ideas and takes a while to find its core, "The Pale King" starts with a core and then branches out. "Infinite Jest" is (sometimes) about entertainment, "The Pale King" is about boredom. "Infinite Jest," at times is basically transcribed slapstick, "The Pale King" is overall drier (though still pretty funny at times).
Their similarities, however, lie in being about what seems to be the only thing on Wallace's mind: how we interact with the world around us.
God, what I would give to see a finished version of this book. May he rest in peace.
All this David Foster Wallace stuff is making me sad. I'm gonna speedrun Cat's Cradle, then Crime and Punishment!
This text, however incomplete it may be, remains shockingly potent. While this does speak to Wallace's genius as a writer, it also speaks to the ability of David Pietsch, his editor, who deserves a huge portion of the praise this book has received. While I would have loved to see how Wallace bridges the gap between the more disparate ideas — maybe he already did, and I missed it? — this remains a lucid and relatively complete text on how we direct our attention, among other things. In some ways, it does feel like the counterweight to "Infinite Jest": "Infinite Jest" starts with separate ideas and takes a while to find its core, "The Pale King" starts with a core and then branches out. "Infinite Jest" is (sometimes) about entertainment, "The Pale King" is about boredom. "Infinite Jest," at times is basically transcribed slapstick, "The Pale King" is overall drier (though still pretty funny at times).
Their similarities, however, lie in being about what seems to be the only thing on Wallace's mind: how we interact with the world around us.
God, what I would give to see a finished version of this book. May he rest in peace.
All this David Foster Wallace stuff is making me sad. I'm gonna speedrun Cat's Cradle, then Crime and Punishment!
I haven't read any of DFW's other works, so I have nothing to compare to, but this really did seem like an unfinished novel, both in the structure/plot and the writing. At many times early on I wanted to just be finished already, but later in the book I found some of the sections/chapters to be much stronger. My personal favorite was Section 22, with Section 46 being my second favorite. Many of the sections were good little stories of their own, while others didn't do much for me or were downright annoying. I think the good sections and the strength towards the end of the book redeemed this story for me.