THE PALE KING

I just got mine yesterday. I will start it tonight (hopefully).

I've had mine for a couple days, but I've been too busy to seriously start it (though I've been skimming here and there).

I will say that I think Wallace chose an incredibly resonant epigraph, from Frank Bidart's "Borges and I" :

"We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed."

Another author to put on the TBR list. I haven't read The Girl with Curious Hair and The Broom of the System I read Infinite Jest a decade ago and A Funny Thing I'll Never Do Again a few years later, enjoying both immensely.

It would be fascinating to compare DFW and William Vollmann, since the style of both tends be that of logorrhea. Vollmann and DFW create "mountains of words," although DFW exhibits an OCD-like academic meticulousness (footnotes, etc.). Vollmann has heavily footnoted works, especially his nonfiction and his Seven Dreams series.

I started it. The opening pages are DFW doing Americana, then it gets into more familiar territory. The accounting/IRS stuff is going to be overwhelming (not a bad thing, necessarily).

I'm a financial analyst who came to finance through being a software trainer, so I don't have an accounting background and am just starting to take classes in accounting. I really look forward to reading all about the IRS stuff while taking my classes. Maybe I can ask my accounting prof about stuff I don't get. Need to put in an order for the book.

Here are some excerpts courtesy of The New Yorker (the Harper's stuff is paywalled), Amazon doesn't yet have a "look inside" preview:

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/12/14/091214fi_fiction_wallace?cu...

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/03/09/090309fi_fiction_wallace

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2011/03/07/110307fi_fiction_wallace

And, if you're not concerned with spoliers, Michiko Kakutani's review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/books/the-pale-king-by-david-foster-wallace-bo...

I dunno.

This book and the "new" Nabokov novel that was released not long ago amount to literary table scraps to me. Of little interest--two fine writers having their graves robbed. Are these works anything more than apocrypha and, like the posthumous Hemingway releases, couldn't these uneven, fragmentary efforts actually dilute or damage the reputation of writers who deserve far better?

I note that one part of the Kakutani review states THE PALE KING is "stupefyingly dull" in some places. Hardly the kind of endorsement for a writer of DFW's stature one would expect. I've found his work difficult, requiring a good amount of mental energy and agility but NEVER dull.

The completists may clamor for this stuff but does it serve any great literary purpose and isn't it better to leave uncompleted books and stories in archives, picked over by biographers and those doing literary studies, etc.?

The David Foster Wallace necrophilia industry has been energetically publishing every scrap of his writing it can find. I would not be surprised to see some magazine publish one of his grocery lists.

This is why writers should destroy all their papers.

7: I am a little confused because I seem to remember a while ago there was a big discussion of Kakutani as a reviewer and you were not overwhelmed. Why is the "stupefyingly dull" comment not taken with the same grain of salt?

8: I have to admit I don't know/have not followed how "rough draft" the Pale King was when DFW died, but I am very much looking forward to reading it just because IJ was so very very incredible.

6:
"All That," it turns out, didn't make the final cut.

7:
I'll break my reply down by paragraph

>I believe the typical response here goes something like, "Blah blah blah Kafka blah blah." That's good enough, right? Kafka is kind of the prototypical example of wonderful writing that wouldn't be around without literary "grave-robbing." You may disagree, but that one example is enough for me to discount the 'never publish stuff that authors don't explicitly want published during their lifetimes' imperative. And that's leaving aside the fact that it actually seems that Wallace did indicate to his widow that he wanted some or all of The Pale King published. The Nabokov book is a different story, since he all but forbade its publication (though, again, Kafka).

>Kakutani also thought Infinite Jest was a self-indulgent mess (if one that seemed to augur greater things forthcoming). I don't trust her opinions. Maybe you tend to agree with Kakutani, but I'd at least like to suggest that she's never quite "gotten" Wallace. Incidentally, the other day I saw some reviewer/commentator claiming that the section of the book published in the New Yorker under the title "Backbone" is somehow an incidence of the novel parodying itself. I'm not 100% sure what that's supposed to mean, given the multiple narrative voices/variation in tone evident in The Pale King, but I'm pretty sure I disagree. I thought that was an eery, affecting story when I read it in the New Yorker. The medical jargon didn't annoy me or bore me or any of that. Let's remember that Wallace was an avant garde writer, and that *most* people are frustrated by avant garde fiction.

> "Does it serve any great literary purpose?"
Umm...the same purpose the publication of any literary prose serves, I'd imagine. I don't understand this question.
"Isn't it better to leave uncompleted books...in archives?"
Again, Kafka. So: no. If you're somebody who thinks that, on principle, Kafka's stuff shouldn't have been published, then I guess we're just going to disagree on this. If you don't think that, though, then you're going to have to make that objection a little bit more sophisticated to make it convincing.

But was Kafka's stuff left in an uncompleted state, pieced together by some editor (for not necessarily altruistic reasons but to gain some extra lucre courtesy a dead, highly regarded author)? It was finished work, meticulously crafted and edited BY THE AUTHOR.

Kafka's instructions to Max Brod were an indication of his mental state and insecurity as an artist. He was a very sick man at the end of his life, mentally and physically, and not the best judge of his work and legacy.

Anna, I don't recall slagging Kakutani--I don't really follow ANY literary critic, relying on my instincts or the endorsements of fellow writers/folks who I know possess above average taste.

11:
As I mentioned, Wallace seems to have indicated to his widow that he wanted part or all of the book published.

And, for the record, Kafka's stuff was completely disordered when it passed into Brod's hands. For example, the order of the chapters in The Trial was guessed at and ultimately decided by editors, and The Castle ends mid-sentence.

Interesting, that the short stories and "Metamorphosis" (all fully realized/completed at the time of the author's death) are the titles that hold appeal to me but the longer efforts, CASTLE and THE TRIAL (both, I agree, left unfinished) I find quite tedious.

Maybe Kafka knew what he was doing when he told Brod to destroy them. Yet the shorter efforts still retain great power and originality. So I'm betwixt and between on ol' Franz...

>10 Sutpen: - using Kafka is disingenuous: he is the exception to the rule. Everyone hopes a lost masterpiece is found but it doesn't happen. Most posthumous material is relatively poor; abandoned works, first drafts, etc. The Pale King appears to have been pieced together by DFW's editor, there is no evidence that the writer wanted it to be published. (I don't accept that a writer should have to burn their work then. It's not that easy - how many people can set fire to a large portion of their life?).

>10 Sutpen:

That's interesting, I wasn't even thinking about Kafka, but you're right to bring that up as an example. Again, like everything else in this miserable world, every situation is unique. The grave robbing of Nabokov, with last year's Laura, wasn't exactly justified, yet I was very much hoping it would be. That hardcover version made absolutely no sense, outside a financial one. I may have been the only one to be excited by Salinger's death, knowing there'd probably be some new things coming, but then I've heard the stuff he wrote was finished, he just had no desire to see it through the publishing process, and perhaps wanted to give whoever else he was leaving behind, a little nest egg. But at 496 pages, this (The Pale King) doesn't seem like it'd have a table-scraps feel to it.

Who here would not give anything for one more novel from their favorite author? But I guess that creates the evironment for exploitation.

Vollmann and Wallace are similar in a way, their prolix deliveries. I don't know how you'd edit them down. I wonder what a Gordon Lish version of IJ would be like. Less is more peaked 30 years ago. But who knows?

Actually, the Kakutani review made me want to read this book, and I'm willing to bet "stupefyingly dull" in some places is a somewhat fair assessment. But DFW was sort of dealing with those issues in his work, so I don't think it was a criticism of the work per se, just an aspect (then again, is stupefyingly dull ever a good idea?). I think Kakutani is tougher on better writers and then sometimes loosens up on the lesser, unknown commodities. She's not all-around great, but she can be generally good.

14:
The Kafka example just serves to show how silly it is to have an absolute rule on this topic in the first place. The only way to handle posthumous publication is on a case-by-case basis (in my opinion). As for "there is no evidence that the writer wanted it to be published," that just isn't true. Do you really think Wallace's widow and his longtime editor and agent (people who genuinely seemed to care for the guy) are all lying about the fact that Wallace left some part of the manuscript organized, to be sent to Little Brown after his death?

It depends what anti-depressant medication was on DFW's grocery list. Then that might be worth publishing.

Again, Wallace's state of mind at the end of his life is open to debate. He might have wanted portions published or excerpted in quality magazines like THE NEW YORKER or whatever. But a meticulous craftsman allowing an uneven mish-mash put out with his name attached to it is a hard sell to me. And sometimes what editors/agents and surviving spouses and beneficiaries want and what the author really intended are two different things and some profit motive just, y'know, MIGHT be involved.

I'll probably read it one of these days. But I'm not sure the world needs it.

I'm one of those who hates Kakutani. There were others.

>16 Sutpen: - that's an interesting question. The initial story was that the manuscript was found by his agent after a trawling through his papers, the story now is that the manuscript was found by his wife all neatly packaged. Why has the story changed? To make his seem that it was DFW's wish to see it published?

I'll go along with A.J.

If a writer gets a premonition that death is near, time to start the bonfire and anticipate greedhead relatives and heirs. I'm not talking about destroying personal papers, journals and such, I mean ANYTHING that can possibly be exploited, works the author would rather "bury in someone else's garbage" (to quote Wm. Burroughs).

Harlan Ellison claims he's doing exactly that.

Take your unfinished work into the great beyond with you, complete it there.

20:
As far as I'm aware, that wasn't the initial story. In fact, I think if you look back at articles published in 2008 and 2009, you'll find that they all mention a stack of pages being arranged on his desk for his wife to find. That was the portion of the novel/whatever-you-want-to-call-it that Wallace apparently almost sent to Little Brown before he died. It was accompanied by a large quantity of stuff that Wallace hadn't deemed polished enough to send yet, and it's that stuff that was trawled through by Bonnie Nadell, passed on to Michael Pietsch, and parts of which finally did make it into what's been published.

I think you have to be pretty determined to turn this into a conspiracy if you choose to believe that there is no evidence that Wallace wanted any parts of this thing published.

The three versions of finding the manuscript are -
1. found by his widow, neatly placed on the desk
2. found by his widow & agent, neatly placed on the desk
3. found by his agent among lots of other papers.

I have no problem if they had published the 200 pages as is but the book in the shops has been created by DFW's editor from those pages and "bins, drawers and wire baskets". He then spent two years 'constructing' the novel. What has been published is not DFW's partial novel but an artificial work pieced together by his editor. Does this mean it is without merit? No. Does this mean it is a DFW novel? No.

21: Steinbeck, despite the volumes of posthumously published correspondence and the posthumous reworking of Arthur, made a point of burning a lot of his files late in life.

He described this as liberating himself from all those unfinished stories begging to be reworked, but of course others have suggested a deliberate attempt to shape his legacy.

Contrast with Hunter S. Thompson, who wrecked his reputation by publishing all his half-finished shit while he was still alive.

There's something really strange about the way THE PALE KING is being handled. Reviewers being very tentative. Folks are admitting the book was assembled, really the construct of editors...and yet they seem unwilling to pan it. Does a post-modern novel resist any kind of meaningful criticism BECAUSE of its non-traditional format? I think of the oeuvre of B.S. Johnson--one of his books comes as a loose manuscript in a box and readers can arrange it to their liking. How does one go about critiquing prose that can be moved around, not subject to the usual authorial control and restraint?

Here's the excerpt from the Lev Grossman review that seems...odd to me. Grossman acknowledging the articifiality of the book's structure while insisting it's Foster's best book yet.

"Nadell (DFW's agent) called Michael Pietsch, publisher of Little, Brown & Co. and Wallace’s longtime editor. He flew out in January and started reading. As it turned out, there was a lot more than just that neat stack. “They brought me literally bins and drawers and wire baskets,” Pietsch says. “Just heaps of pages. There was no order to them.” He went back to New York City with a duffel bag full of them.

Pietsch spent two years assembling and editing the contents of that duffel bag. The results will be published, appropriately enough, on April 15. If The Pale King isn’t a finished work, it is, at the very least, a remarkable document, by no means a stunt or an attempt to cash in on Wallace’s posthumous fame. Despite its shattered state and its unpromising subject matter, or possibly because of them, The Pale King represents Wallace’s finest work as a novelist."

So we have 200 pages of neatly arranged manuscript on the desk and then this hodge-podge. I'll go along with Jargoneer here--publish that 200 pages as an unfinished novel (mainly for DFW fans desperate for that kind of thing) and leave the rest to the archives.

God, can you imagine is someone did that to Cliff after he dies? Christ...

I'm sure some day they will publish the 200 DFW-approved pages version. I'm sure partial DFW is better than overly-edited DFW-ish thing.

After his demise, I'm going to publish Cliff's collected Library Thing posts as a play in novel form. Just working on the title now....

#27 I'd pay $3.99 to download that from amazon.

"Memos of an Arrogant Shithead"

"Slim Pickings From the Slushpile"

"Mentally Absent: Collected Notes of A Canuck Misanthrope"

Etc.

I'm going to burn the interweb thingy to stop this grave robbing.

I'm glad that Cliff et al know exactly what David Foster Wallace wanted when he died (and that his widow and friends do not). Personally, I'm interested in good fiction, not guessing the desires of the dead. I started reading The Pale King, and there is a lot of incredible writing there.

2666 is a posthumous release that may or may not be as Bolano intended it to be (probably not), and it's the best book of the last decade. I guess y'all should avoid that one too.

Well, I won't speak for the "et als" but I think this discussion has been informed and fair and introduced troubling questions re: posthumous publications and authorial integrity.

But, of course, you can choose to portray it in whatever light you like...

>31 inaudible: - it's a different scenario, Bolano had already submitted a first draft to his publisher before he died. More akin to that would be the finding of a part VI of the novel in his papers (which has happened, not to mentioned another two novels). Nobody knows what DFW wanted - he left no instructions, no notes, and no-one ever really knows the thoughts of another.

We haven't mentioned Virgil yet. . . .

Something about me--not sure if it's the writer or reader in me--doesn't want to touch The Pale King. I like Wallace's non-fiction a lot more than I like his fiction, but I don't want to take the chance of something partial and unpolished diminishing my opinion of DFW's fiction.

34: Depends on the literary wonkitude of the particular reader. I have 2 different versions of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and earlier versions of Lady Chatterley's Lover and Lolita

As a writer, reviewer, and historian, I am always interested in earlier versions, unfinished versions, and the like. Sometimes an artist's death affords us to look at a work mid-metamorphosis, that monster in between caterpillar and butterfly. Granted, the half-baked piece lacks the polish and spit-shine of a finished work -- if a work is ever even finished, as opposed to be abandoned, re: Vachel Lindsay -- and it also humanizes the artist. It's heartening to know that Nabokov wasn't a machine that churned out lapidary works of perfect precision.

Not sure that my long-winded answer will settle anything -- meteors and tactical nuclear warheads settle things -- but I'm still a champion of the gray area, breaking the circuit of the either-or mentality. Not all posthumous works are literary necrophilia and not all works necessarily need the light of day with publication. I'll leave blanket generalizations for ideologues and fanatics.

I can't disagree with any of that. What may also be pertinent here is that I don't have/don't make the time to read even the 'finished' novels on my list--so the very idea of confronting variants might scare me off.

If I see PALE KING in a discount bin for $3.99 eighteen months from now, I'll likely snap it up. But to me it's nowhere near essential reading; more like a curio for people hung up on famous last words.

37: That's how I got Mason & Dixon and the occasional Taschen book. My tastes become even more expansive and ecumenical as cover price goes down. Unfortunately, whenever I shop with my fiancee, she always retorts, "Are you really going to read that?" Since she knows my TBR pile is blocking the flight paths of jumbo jets.

31: The issue isn't that I know what DFW wanted, or even that I know what he didn't want.

The issue is that I don't know what he wanted. The work, as published, isn't really his. He never polished it. And seeing his half-finished work published bothers me.

The Pale King. I'm about 300 pages in. As with much of Wallace's fiction, Infinite Jest is the exception here, it's a bit hit and miss. However, when he is getting it right, posthumously published or not, he's still probably the most interesting American writer of the last thirty or so years. Thus, I think a wise reader would be remiss in not reading The Pale King for fear of it not being exactly what he wanted. The real proof is in the writing in the book. And, the writing in the book, at many points, is both characteristic Wallace and highly interesting.

I just received the book yesterday.

This article by the editor of the book is interesting.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/08/david-foster-wallace-pale-king

The last couple lines of that piece really sum up the dilemma of THE PALE KING quite aptly.

Whenever I think of reading DFW's unfinished posthumously published work, this runs through my mind: "Something smells delicious!"

I know I'm a sick fuck, but so was DFW. I know I will eventually read it, but I'm still sad he's gone and it feels like graverobbing.

Of course, the real literary grave-robber was Rosetti. "I loved you so much, Lizzie, I wrote these poems just for you. I am going to bury them with you." A few years later. "You know I do have some unpublished work. Just wait here a minute." Rossetti departs with shovel.