The Pale King

March 14, 2011
A pile of sketches, minor developments, preludes to events that never happen (or only happen in passing, off the page), and get-to-know-your-characters background info that would have been condensed or chopped had Wallace lived to finish it, this isnât the era-defining monumental work weâve all been waiting for since Infinite Jest altered the landscape of American fiction. (To be fair, how many of those sorts of books can one person be expected to write?) It is, however, one hell of a document and a valiant tribute to the late Wallace, being, as it is, a transfixing and hyper-literate descent into relentless, inescapable despair and soul-negating boredom. --The story ostensibly follows several recruits as they arrive at an IRS processing center in Peoria, Ill., in May 1985. Among them is David Foster Wallace, 20 years old and suffering âsevere/disfiguringâ acne. Everyone he encounters at the Peoria REC (Regional Examination Center; Wallace elevates acronyms and bureaucratic triple-speak to an art) is a grotesque: socially maladjusted, fantasizing of death (a training officer keeps a gun in her purse and âhas promised herself a bullet in the roof of her mouth after her 1,500th training presentationâ), and possessors of traumatic backstories. One recruit watches his fatherâs death by subway car; another survives an adolescence of sustained and varied sexual abuse only to witness her motherâs murder; another sweats constantly and so heavily that he dampens those unfortunate enough to be near him. These are the recruits training to become âwigglers,â low-level IRS drones who crank out rote tax return reviews at Tingle tables (no etymology given) in the regional IRS office, calculating return-on-investment for potential audits and resigning themselves to a lifetime of tedium in an office where time is ticked off in fiscal quarters. They are only slightly aware of one another and exist as cameos outside of their own chapters. Meanwhile, a nebulous and menacing bureaucratic intrigue is afoot with the arrival of âfact psychicâ Claude Sylvanshine, who is in Peoria to do advance work and intelligence gathering for his boss, Merle Lehrl, âan administrator of administratorsâ and dark puppet-master figure.--Thatâs the structure. Wedged in are snapshots, character sketches, and anecdotes. Thereâs a bombing at another IRS office, a mass poisoning, the specter of culture shift in the form of the âSpackman Initiative,â a messy bureaucratic hangover spurred by a backlog-induced meltdown at another IRS office.--Stretches of this are nothing short of sublime-the first two chapters are a real put-the-reader-on-notice charging bull blitz, and the David Foster Wallace sections (youâll not be surprised to hear that these are footnoted) are tiny masterpieces of that whole self-aware po-mo thing of his thatâs so heavily imitated. Then there are the one-offsâa deadening 50-page excursion to a wiggler happy hour, a former stonerâs lengthy and tedious recollection of his stony pastâbut this is a novel of boredom weâre talking about, and, so, yes, some of it is quite boring. And while itâs hard not to wince at each of the many mentions of suicide, Wallace is often achingly funny; a passage that begins âI have only one real story about shit. But itâs a doozyâ and ends with a âprison-type gang-type sexual assault gone wrongâ is pants-pissingly hilarious.--Of course, this is an unfinished novel. Itâs sloppy at times, inconsistent in others, baggy here, too-lean there, and...

April 1, 2011

Rollicking postmodern romp, by the late cult-favorite novelist and essayist Wallace (with help from an editor), through the bowels of the IRS.

Leave it to Wallace (Infinite Jest, 1996, etc.) to find fascination in the workings of a tax audit. Yet, with its mock-Arthurian title, his novel explores the minds and mores of the little men in the gray flannel suits, or at least their modern gray-souled counterparts. The story of the making of the novel is at least as interesting as the book itself: It was assembled, writes editor Michael Pietsch, from "a green duffel bag and two Trader Joe's bags heavy with manuscripts," working from multiple drafts and notes and various other clues, but with no certainty that Wallace intended the book to have its current, somewhat lumpy shape. Neither would Wallace, obsessive perfectionist, allowed some of the sloppinesses and redundancies in the present version to stand. Thus it deserves its title-page rubric "An Unfinished Novel," and thus it should be thought of less as the last word by the late writer—and certainly more manuscripts will be extracted from the vaults and published—than as a glimpse into his mind at work. And what a mind: Wallace was nothing if not thorough, and his tale of accountant Claude Sylvanshine, heroic traveler on bad commuter airlines and dogged reader of spreadsheets, is full of details, facts and factoids assembled over years of study and rumination. There's something of the author, perhaps, in Claude, but then there's something of him in the other characters, too, and it would be a mistake to read this as roman à clef. All of Wallace's intellectual interests come through: the notes and asides, the linguistic brilliance, the fact piled atop fact, the excurses into entropy and, yes, autobiography ("Like many Americans," reads one note, "I've been sued...Litigation is no fun, and it's worth one's time and trouble to try to head it off in advance whenever possible.") Does it add up to a story? Not always. But there are many moments of great beauty, as with this small passage: "Drinion looks at her steadily for a moment. His face, which is a bit oily, tends to shine in the fluorescence of the Examination areas, though less so in the windows' indirect light, the shade of which indicates that clouds have piled up overhead, though this is just Meredith Rand's impression, and one not wholly conscious."  

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.

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November 15, 2010

When a character named David Foster Wallace arrives at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, IL, he takes on a job so joyless and machinelike that (along with other new recruits) he's given boredom-survival training. This last, unfinished work by the author of Infinite Jest will be getting a big push and likely considerable attention, given Wallace's reputation and tragic death. Readings and discussions are being scheduled nationwide at the time of publication. Wow, I want to see; pitch to all your literary readers.

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