Guest IRARI Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 "The Pale King" is expected to be released 2010. It focuses on a group of IRS agents working in a midwest office. The novel is unfinished and runs "several hundred thousand words" along with "notes, outlines and other material". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest zaphod Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 yeah there's a large article about this in the new yorker with an excerpt as well. looks interesting but i can't imagine he wanted this to see the light of day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest 277: 930-933 Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 I just bought Infinite Jest, loving every minute of it so far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest zaphod Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 i work for a library and sort of noticed that infinite jest on the shelf a lot (probably because i got it out 2 or 3 times attempting to finally finish) - 2 days after he died however, there was a reserve list of 12 people... ...that always happens when an author dies new yorker article Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
playbynumbers Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 they published an excerpt in that same issue of the new yorker, and it's the worst fiction he's written since 1989. i'm not holding my breath Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest zaphod Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 i didn't think it was bad. what was wrong with it, besides being rough and a little tedious (like every other thing he wrote)? edit: i think he hit his peak with brief interviews...that probably contains his best writing and is his most consistent work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
playbynumbers Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 there's one other published excerpt from that novel, which came out in i think 2006, that was slightly better (the 'baby' thing). as for why i didn't like it ... i've learned that i really can't articulate such things very well, as it's perhaps impossible, but basically, it was maddeningly boring and repetitive and not in an 'artistic' way. it just fell flat; the etymology of 'bore' was completely shoehorned in and made no sense; the prose was lifeless and just didn't feel like dfw. i wouldn't have immediately guessed that it was by him, actually. ... i don't think his other writing is tedious; there's always a joy and eagerness and brisk genius to it, even when he's going off on tangents, there's care for the reader, warmth, brilliance. ... this, though, felt like it was written by a burned-out depressed shell of dfw, which i think was the case. edit: correct. in terms of fiction, that was his peak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest zaphod Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 well it did seem self consciously straight forward, so maybe that's how it seemed lifeless. i mean, it certainly wasn't a very good piece of writing. i'm kind of depressed they're releasing any of this, actually. it seems really unnecessary, like they're trying to position him as some sort of generational spokesman who died too young, or something... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
playbynumbers Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 i think one could read dfw's trajectory from 1986 to 2005 ('oblivion') as an attempt to get rid of his own postmodernizing tendencies, to free himself from pynchon and barth; oblivion came closest, where there weren't any footnotes, the character names were perfectly normal, the sentences were a more reasonable length, etc. and this is fine; the footnotes and hypertext and blah blah actually were becoming sort of tedious, and it's good for authors to push themselves, etc. but he threw the baby out with the bathwater, it would seem, with 'the pale king.' if you iron out ALL of the uniquely dfw things, then you just have another depressing boilerplate 'new yorker' short story. and i felt the same way when i heard they were publishing this so soon; though i guess if he really did clean up the manuscript and leave it on his desk for his wife to find ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest zaphod Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 ...he was insane? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
playbynumbers Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 lol. i use ellipses way too much, we can probably all agree on that. but seriously; it seems like he at least somewhat intended for it to be published, if he organized his notes and collated one manuscript and left it in an easy-to-find place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest zaphod Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 yeah but he also intended to hang himself so...lol ugh, i just read that the guy from the office is releasing a movie of brief interviews. :unhappy: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
playbynumbers Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 i read about that early last year, and was amazed to hear that dfw actually said "you unlocked the puzzle" when he read the screenplay, and was totally in approval of the film version. but i read a review at slashfilm (one of their bloggers saw it at a festival) which said it was completely horrible; and i generally tend to agree with those guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mr Salads Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 Ive never read david foster wallace. Am i missing out on anything? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest 277: 930-933 Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 i work for a library and sort of noticed that infinite jest on the shelf a lot (probably because i got it out 2 or 3 times attempting to finally finish) - 2 days after he died however, there was a reserve list of 12 people... ...that always happens when an author dies new yorker article yeah it probably does... but it's still kind of a weird thing - "hey this guy died... NOW i can read him" I think it's a matter of people being more aware of a writer because of their deaths being widely publicized rather than feeling they should only read book by dead writers. And then the fact that publishers tend to cash in by doing reprints of the writer's considered best works and those ending up on the special attention tables in bookstores. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
playbynumbers Posted March 5, 2009 Share Posted March 5, 2009 i dunno, i don't see what's so sinister about it ... if i hadn't heard of dfw, and then read all of the articles written about him after his death, i might be interested enough to check out his stuff. it seems natural; death = publicity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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