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wordmaster 's review for:
The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel
by David Foster Wallace
After a second reading, my feelings haven't much changed. I'm adding half a star for those sections that do have really good writing, but all in all the novel feels too "patchwork" to really land for me. It's like one of those pointillist paintings in reverse: when zoomed in on the small individual sections look great, but zoomed out and looked at as a whole they don't complement each other as well as perhaps might have been intended.
3.5 stars
FIRST READ-THROUGH REVIEW:
Reading the introduction to The Pale King I was struck by two thoughts of equal intensity: with elation, "This sounds just like Infinite Jest!" and with disappointment, "This sounds just like Infinite Jest!" IJ is an exceptionally important novel to me, perhaps my favorite and certainly the single title that has occupied the most of my time in reading, re-reading, pondering, and re-examining. And so I was both eager and skeptical to read The Pale King as an extension of or a successor to DFW's masterwork. In the same way IJ explored addiction and recovery, isolation and community, editor Michael Pietsch assured me The Pale King would explore boredom and sadness. DFW had already proven himself, in my estimation, acutely insightful and capable of expressing to a T my own thoughts and experiences on the whole of contemporary adult American experience. But would this novel serve to heighten my opinion of him or would it instead lower it, perhaps by planting the worrying seed of doubt that the man was a one trick pony?
The discovery of how I might feel had me practically frothing at the mouth with anticipation. I will maintain fervently that reading David Foster Wallace's works is an Experience in a way that other authors' just isn't. Reading DFW is a lot like hearing my own thoughts articulated, refined, expounded and expanded upon in a way that both confirms and surprises at once.
So, what's my verdict? It is a lot like Infinite Jest -- the most casual and dismissive review would probably be "Substitute tennis with taxes and AA with the IRS and you know what to expect." And that's (thinly) true; if you did not enjoy Infinite Jest you're not likely to enjoy this book, for probably a lot of the same reasons. Though less fragmented, the point of view shifts frequently between characters who are often not clearly named right away. There is technical jargon and terms from a largely obscure arena. There is a sudden introduction of supernatural elements in the form of ghosts and levitation. People's inner monologues are highlighted while action is minimal (in one case, DFW writes a 100 page long chapter in which an IRS agent goes on and on about his father and his formative years--even I, a rabid fan, found that excessive--plus the whole thing is almost immediately undercut by a footnote declaring it, in essence, irrelevant and a waste of time.). And, yes, there are footnotes but they're limited in this instance to a handful of chapters rather than the full work and they appear on the same page as true footnotes rather than the end of the book as endnotes.
Other similarities begin to crop up the further along this goes: some discussion of the various effects of various recreational drugs; an irritated depiction of the intake procedures of mental health facilities; a very pretty female character who expresses both the power and the prison that extreme prettiness creates.
Actually, this book really IS a whole lot like Infinite Jest in retrospect... Honestly what I enjoyed most was reading the closing "Notes and Asides" section in which Wallace alludes to a larger, undeveloped thread about the IRS assembling an X-men-like team of superpowered agents capable of approaching routine and boredom with paranormal abilities. That story, had it been completed, would have definitely distinguished The Pale King from Infinite Jest
Yet despite a lot of thematic and stylistic similarity, there's a different je ne sais quois to segments of this which marks it as at least attempting to be non-derivative of IJ. It's tricky to pin down in words, so I'll just blurt it out: this book seems blunter than Infinite Jest. Its presentation is rougher and there is less of an obviously crafted structure. This is likely due to the fact that DFW's editor took the various pieces written and organized them using his best guess as to DFW's intent. But other than the style, the content is more bluntly judgmental and preachy; where IJ is all about tearing down irony and erecting honesty this one is more overtly didactic, or perhaps I should say "biased." And while Infinite Jest made its point by performing, by realizing the vision of a heartfelt attempt at cutting through bullshit and conveying the absolute need for and baffling difficulty of real, open, honest communication, The Pale King is just kind of overt in its statement of purpose and Wallace's main ideas. It's less clever that way. And I know that this is a criticism many have leveled against Infinite Jest as well, and I know Wallace isn't typically what you'd call subtle in his sometimes desperate-seeming attempts to get his point across in any of his canon. There's a very in-your-face message about being uncomfortably in your own head in this book which is a carryover from most of Wallace's works. In fact, he includes an author's note as a sort of handy key for reading the thematic symbolism throughout. And I'm the kind of reader who loves a good allegory, and this whole "IRS as a backdrop to analyze how the systems we create both reflect and consume the people who construct them" is a really interesting starting point. But it isn't the power punch I'd expected. The language, strikingly and obviously DFW's prose, is less poetic than IJ's (which is saying a lot, since IJ is mostly known for being systematically, laboriously, obfuscately clause-laden and hardly lyrical at all). So all these things combine to make it read like a logical follow-up to Infinite Jest, but one that lacks finesse.
3 stars out of 5. I suppose on principle I can never award "full credit" to an unfinished novel, and will have to wonder how close this publication comes to DFW's vision. It's good, but it often seems more like reading someone doing a very good Wallace impression rather than a wholly realized piece of his work. It often reads kind of like a short story collection more than a cohesive novel, particularly the first third. I feel like it needed to be better revised to really shine as distinct and perhaps could then have attained a higher level than it has.
3.5 stars
FIRST READ-THROUGH REVIEW:
Reading the introduction to The Pale King I was struck by two thoughts of equal intensity: with elation, "This sounds just like Infinite Jest!" and with disappointment, "This sounds just like Infinite Jest!" IJ is an exceptionally important novel to me, perhaps my favorite and certainly the single title that has occupied the most of my time in reading, re-reading, pondering, and re-examining. And so I was both eager and skeptical to read The Pale King as an extension of or a successor to DFW's masterwork. In the same way IJ explored addiction and recovery, isolation and community, editor Michael Pietsch assured me The Pale King would explore boredom and sadness. DFW had already proven himself, in my estimation, acutely insightful and capable of expressing to a T my own thoughts and experiences on the whole of contemporary adult American experience. But would this novel serve to heighten my opinion of him or would it instead lower it, perhaps by planting the worrying seed of doubt that the man was a one trick pony?
The discovery of how I might feel had me practically frothing at the mouth with anticipation. I will maintain fervently that reading David Foster Wallace's works is an Experience in a way that other authors' just isn't. Reading DFW is a lot like hearing my own thoughts articulated, refined, expounded and expanded upon in a way that both confirms and surprises at once.
So, what's my verdict? It is a lot like Infinite Jest -- the most casual and dismissive review would probably be "Substitute tennis with taxes and AA with the IRS and you know what to expect." And that's (thinly) true; if you did not enjoy Infinite Jest you're not likely to enjoy this book, for probably a lot of the same reasons. Though less fragmented, the point of view shifts frequently between characters who are often not clearly named right away. There is technical jargon and terms from a largely obscure arena. There is a sudden introduction of supernatural elements in the form of ghosts and levitation. People's inner monologues are highlighted while action is minimal (in one case, DFW writes a 100 page long chapter in which an IRS agent goes on and on about his father and his formative years--even I, a rabid fan, found that excessive--plus the whole thing is almost immediately undercut by a footnote declaring it, in essence, irrelevant and a waste of time.). And, yes, there are footnotes but they're limited in this instance to a handful of chapters rather than the full work and they appear on the same page as true footnotes rather than the end of the book as endnotes.
Other similarities begin to crop up the further along this goes: some discussion of the various effects of various recreational drugs; an irritated depiction of the intake procedures of mental health facilities; a very pretty female character who expresses both the power and the prison that extreme prettiness creates.
Actually, this book really IS a whole lot like Infinite Jest in retrospect... Honestly what I enjoyed most was reading the closing "Notes and Asides" section in which Wallace alludes to a larger, undeveloped thread about the IRS assembling an X-men-like team of superpowered agents capable of approaching routine and boredom with paranormal abilities. That story, had it been completed, would have definitely distinguished The Pale King from Infinite Jest
Yet despite a lot of thematic and stylistic similarity, there's a different je ne sais quois to segments of this which marks it as at least attempting to be non-derivative of IJ. It's tricky to pin down in words, so I'll just blurt it out: this book seems blunter than Infinite Jest. Its presentation is rougher and there is less of an obviously crafted structure. This is likely due to the fact that DFW's editor took the various pieces written and organized them using his best guess as to DFW's intent. But other than the style, the content is more bluntly judgmental and preachy; where IJ is all about tearing down irony and erecting honesty this one is more overtly didactic, or perhaps I should say "biased." And while Infinite Jest made its point by performing, by realizing the vision of a heartfelt attempt at cutting through bullshit and conveying the absolute need for and baffling difficulty of real, open, honest communication, The Pale King is just kind of overt in its statement of purpose and Wallace's main ideas. It's less clever that way. And I know that this is a criticism many have leveled against Infinite Jest as well, and I know Wallace isn't typically what you'd call subtle in his sometimes desperate-seeming attempts to get his point across in any of his canon. There's a very in-your-face message about being uncomfortably in your own head in this book which is a carryover from most of Wallace's works. In fact, he includes an author's note as a sort of handy key for reading the thematic symbolism throughout. And I'm the kind of reader who loves a good allegory, and this whole "IRS as a backdrop to analyze how the systems we create both reflect and consume the people who construct them" is a really interesting starting point. But it isn't the power punch I'd expected. The language, strikingly and obviously DFW's prose, is less poetic than IJ's (which is saying a lot, since IJ is mostly known for being systematically, laboriously, obfuscately clause-laden and hardly lyrical at all). So all these things combine to make it read like a logical follow-up to Infinite Jest, but one that lacks finesse.
3 stars out of 5. I suppose on principle I can never award "full credit" to an unfinished novel, and will have to wonder how close this publication comes to DFW's vision. It's good, but it often seems more like reading someone doing a very good Wallace impression rather than a wholly realized piece of his work. It often reads kind of like a short story collection more than a cohesive novel, particularly the first third. I feel like it needed to be better revised to really shine as distinct and perhaps could then have attained a higher level than it has.