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...

This posthumous work from the acclaimed author David Foster Wallace was put together from notes and computer files Wallace had been working on for a decade. It's not really a novel but a collection of stories; snippets; profiles; deliberately dull tax codes; and overly detailed stories about nose-picking, "squeezing shoes," mind games, and the confusion of being alive. Having to deliver some sentences containing more than 250 words and multiple clauses upon clauses, narrator Robert Petkoff is challenged to keep the work alive. The main story, ostensibly about the soul-crushing job of an IRS accountant, is beautifully told but gets lost among the many unrelated pieces in this lengthy book. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine