The Pale King

Has anyone read the Pale king ?
what does Veeky Forums think about it?

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newyorker.com/magazine/2007/02/05/good-people
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Better than IJ tbqhfam

I'm 100 pages in and loving it so far.

in which way?

i've read it and it's much better than IJ.
Anyone who hates wallace probably hasn't read or understood this book.
If you consider its meta-elements, ambitions, and references I would consider this probably the greatest pomo book of all time.

It's less complete because it's a *literally* unfinished work, but I think it gets across DFW's humanism and sincerity in a much clearer way.

IJ death with the extremes of society—figurant geniuses and drug addicts—as they attempted to stay connected with the world and not lapse into utter depression and selfishness. This is why the novel comes of as insincere to a lot of people, and they don't understand how it relates to DFW's philosophy expressed in stuff like 'this is water' or 'e unibus pluram.'

With the Pale King, DFW deals with ordinary people working (mostly) unfulfilling and boring jobs, and how they try and cope with the boredom of every day life.

it's like a hot chick but she's missing a leg

So basically what I'm trying to say is that, unlike IJ which regularly gets criticized for being intellectual masturbations, a major exercise in sadness, cold + uncaring, etc... The Pale King is more down to earth. It deals with the 'average American' as DFW saw him. Just look at the setting of the novel: Peoria, Illinois. Small town Midwest. At an IRA office.

The book (you'll see this when you read the notes in the back) also plays with the theme of cold + robot-like bureaucracy vs human ability + caring. That's the major change going on within the IRS during the novel, and it helps to highlight was I was previously talking about.

I hope this makes sense.

the point of the book is that it's about him. It really is a fractured pseudo-memoir if you're a good reader and know enough about him.
It is finished in that sense.
The possible additions and the prospect of part 2 were more like wishful-thinking possiblities for entertainment, career ambition purposes. If he'd ever actually written them it probably would have seen hokey.
As it is, it feels unfufilling (like life or "the water") but that's part of the point.
The fact that it's not finished for "us" is not relevant and he knew that which is why he died.

his ultimate answer is a bit of a paradox though.
He ends up putting his trust in Mehl Lehlr aka the machine" in his act of suicide (leaving the future to fate/automation)
the trick of this however is that Melhr Lehlr, while all for automation, robotic tendencies, was ultimately a slave to a child. someone else's child who was terribly goo-prone and weak yet still demanded authority.

therefore his final position is kind of a strange compromise on what he saw as the issue which is what i think is very interesting and also lends a sense of completeness to the novel

This is the worst reading of The Pale King I've ever heard

you could even argue that the ferocious child that Mehlr Erroll Lehrl was subservient to is a stand-in for humanity.
Please don't listen to illiterate retards who think the book is literally unfinished. It shows weak reading comprehension and a poor understanding of art and what it really is

Likewise, if you think the DFW character in the novel IS DFW the writer you're a fucking pseud.

Youre a fool.
I could read you under the table on this book.
I practically have it memorised.

This is my favorite chapter:

newyorker.com/magazine/2007/02/05/good-people

no youre a fool.
Its a reference to the death of the author.
the whole story is full of lies, rewritings of events in his life.
Lol what do you think he means by "the service" or the nepotistic juice that got him there.
Please dont even try me.

You may have it memorized but you can do literary interpretation to save your life. It's not about DFW, and it is unfinished.

nice explanation .
is there any book ,not written by DFW , that is similar to the pale king

No it litearlly is about him.
Every character is like a schizophrenic manifestation of his person.
If you had any idea of what being a heady writer is about you'd understand.

youre a terrible reader of subtext btw.
My literary interpretations are practically spot-on with this book. I would even consider it an expertise of sorts.

but the book is fucking RAW. All of his other work is so so polished but pale king is so obviously not in certain parts. Just accept the fact that he killed himself and we'll never see the book finished (duh)

yeah it's disjointed. but you gotta udnerstand that IJ had parts added to by request of editors and whatnot.
This book was pure art. he organized it the way he did on purpose. It was finished to him.
For added emphasis it should be noted that in his unedited manuscript he'd deliberately moved the DFW section to the front.
you're like the characters in the book who stares at te window and sees nothing past it.
learn about art and the human spirit or something. media isnt just fun-time entertainment. or did you miss that too?

Hey bud, don't say things like that without presenting any evidence. You just sound ridiculous.

Well ask me any question about the book then.
something that refutes my claim that the book is in reality a cleverly metafictional titty-pincher memoir-in-disguise (he did say it was the LAST thing the novel was in his pseudo forward)

i'll answer it and i'll prove my point.
It'd be fun for me because I know this book better than my own mother probably

the fact is that the actual evidence is very complicated and convoluted.
It would help if you asked specifics.
You gotta be a good reader to really pick up on it. It might also help to have read his other work and have familiarity with his history.
The fact is, that the book is kind of a memoir if you know what to look for.
He even references his upcoming suicide and circumstances surrounding albeit obliquely near the end of the novel itself.

>write book indicting American narcissism
>book is read as nothing more than the schizophrenic transposition of your life in order to spite your wife, family, and readers all just for the awesome pleasure of a permanently inside joke

boring stuff about IRS and silly pseudo autobiography

he hated his wife near the end so that's what it became.
read bough down by karen green (his widow)
it was an act of revenge.

the worst people are the people who think he's literally referring to the IRS
there's very little actually about that. Most of it is made up or is there to disguise other things.

and he did indict himself in the novel you moron.
learn to read.

why don't you try to get your thoughts on the book published since you know it so well and have such a distinct reading of it?

I have a close realtionship with his biographer DT Max so maybe i will. who knows.
i wasn't joking about my expertise.
I practically re-read his novels once a month (mostly skim or mass chunks of specific sections).
I'm borderline OCD autistic but you would probably never guess in real-life.
He probably was too to some extent

WE WATER NOW

op here could you explian your theory about the book?

Whoa so David Foster Wallace IS the Pale king.. outstanding!

oh boy it would take all day.
But basically it's a big "death of the author"-referencing (read this) pseudo memoir that's more about how/why to live as a person in an uncaring world ruled by bureaucracy.
the answer ends up being kids by the way (which david never had and repeatedly reminds us of the fact throughout the novel in order to earn some sort of forgiveness)

no part of the joke is that he's not the pale king, though he would assume people would think that. It's kind of an indictment of himself.
Thats the kind of the joke of the chapter.

>I have a close realtionship with his biographer DT Max so maybe i will.

what?

I just find it really hard to believe that all the effort he goes through to talk about community and communication and etc. was all disingenuous and in service of playing this sort of joke. Can you briefly defend why he went to such length to enshroud such negative attitudes in book that has ostensive ambitions of being positive? You pretty much only respond with biting sarcasm and telling someone else learn to read. Briefly try to convince me, it shouldnt be hard since you know it so well

I email Max regularly.
I explained earlier.
The book, like almost all of his work (learn to read again), revolves around a paradox.
Re-read what i said about him ultimately siding with Mehlr Ehlr Lehlr in the end.
The "this is water" wallace is hardly even him if you're even paying attention.

The books inst finished because that way it mirrors DFW suicide? Was that his plan after all? What a madman

>not understanding that it wasn't a "mirroring"
his suicide is essentailly the last sentence.
open your eyes.

I dont have the book, can you send me a copy? How long is it?

>Heh... I'll show you "death of the author" ..! Also I don't have any kids who will want their father to teach them

also people gotta get over the fact that it's unfinished like Infinite Jest wasn't too.
It's practically his trademark.
They only slapped that on the cover to sell copies.
He certainly would not have described it that way given the way he deliberately arranged the manuscript and made it somewhat of a focus of his death (his writing room was the only lit room in the house, deliberately left with a single beam of light falling upon the work)

500 pages more or less.
technically the message he's getting across is that we, the readers, are his kids and he could serve us better in death.
In the end this kinda turns true as most people would never have read him had he not.

Did he write a suicide note ?

It's written absolutely beautifully. Would have been considered his best if he had finished it.

I like how lit ironices all dfw's merits, archivements, struggles, suffering, thoughts, ideas, etc...
Admit that you wish you could had been the voice of your generation but DFW already did it, regardless of all his and his work's flaws

he did but karen won't share it.
Probably because it had some really revealing stuff in there.
She was interrogated by the FBI regarding certain lines in there that much we know

It's called The Pale King

source on fbi?

it's also worth mentioning for all my non-believers out there, that most people didnt understand IJ either until hey had someone explain it to them.
TPK doesn't have that luxury and im providing a very inexpensive, brief version of that service in this thread. (there's moer to it though too, notice that karen green was the name of the wife in House of Leaves, the big pomo book that sorta ripped him off).
the meta knows no ends.
People don't give him enough credit or just arent able to think for themselves i cant decide

bough down by his wife.
It explains a lot.

i should also add that it's not so much a referencing to "the death of the author", but a critique

Made me think

i havent read the book what does explain ?

basically he was fucking around and she was mad. He had planned the suicide (almost psychopathically) for a while.
You probably could have picked this up from the "backbone" chapter though

wallace is an overrated hack

also he hit her and knocked one of her "crowned" teeth out
possibly an omen.
Lots of references to teeth

Damn

he was crying at the time.

The important question is did he ever get cucked ?

probably yeah. Its clear from her history (her mother was an insane lady) that she was kinda psycho but thats probably what drew him to her.
She quickly started fucking again after he died but she felt bad about.

Has anyone done an FOIA on Wallace? What did they learn?

i just gave you all the interesting tidbits and youre still not satisfied.
he was just a man.
i shouldn't have to explain it. Basicaly he's playing Barthes game of "there is no way of knowing the author's intent" deliberately and yet still contradicting his points by using the reader's intuition (whiich so many of you apparently lack)

Sorry for not being in wallacian studies, my pleb uni doesnt have them

do any other scholars share your opinion or have a similar reading? or have you uncovered this secret?

i consider myself an expert in the field of meme trilogies and general wallace studies.
I have the respect of some towering people based on my research/readings and someday I intend to make a film version of the novel.
There's a lot good readers out there. Not many are as vocal as me however. I'm kind of a show off.

names of these researchers? Interested in an actually organized argument that shares your perspective

so you cannot even supply the name of one that comes close to what youre saying?

read the wikipedia page. Lots of studies.
None of them refer to the idea directly. Instead they employ the off-shooting suggestions to make more specific, directed arguments of their own.

you can't take my word for it?
It's a conversation

i just find it strange that someone who claims to be such a perspicacious reader of wallace cannot supply the name of one other person doing research on him.

basically none of the papers will acknowledge the deliberate fraudulence of certain parts of the novel.
there's a reason why the fraud audit exam takes place right before the fogle novela (this part is most true to what actually happened that led him to the service aka authorhood/(dom?))

don't trust academics on wallace yet.
trust me they have an agenda to achieve by employing his "image".
TPK essentially tears it down in a beautiful way

Only good part of the book is when he wakes up
in that lovecraftian world with a falcon hunter who he's tryna bang

wtf are you talkign about

well I suggest you start writing an article or book about it. I'm skeptical of what youre saying but it's interesting nonetheless and at least plausible. If you believe in this interpretation that strongly I really hope you do express your thoughts, I would read it

I'm not an academic.
I don't write well (if you haven't noticed) which is part of my attraction to wallace out of all the meme-trilogy (my field of expertise). His prose is more like how i think.
As i mentioned before i do plan on making a screenplay of the novel that will hopefully serve as a strong companion. It will be more about David's last days but with enough references to the book that you could read it again and it would feel new.

I guess in reality it would be more of an adaptation of bough down.

I can't tell if you're a lunatic, an extreme ironist, an idiot, or a dedicated reader of Wallace but I wish you luck on your project.

this is gonna sound cliche but I get that a lot.
I'm dedicated to certain books to a fault. Wallace in particular. The only irony about me is that i'm actually a really nice guy.

thanks though

I can't sleep because I'm sick and I want to see discussion itt
Post something interesting, fags

My copy of it got stolen by crackheads, most likely by accident, from my Jeep in Taos, NM.

So I have no idea, OP.

I wonder if those crackheads read it and got litpilled

Most likely not. It just happened to be in an unmarked duffel back in my car, and my guess is that another vehicle was coming to the trailhead parking lot and so they got spooked and took the only bag they didn't get a chance to look through. It probably got thrown out or is in a used bookstore somewhere in New Mexico by now.

>tfw I'm back on the East coast and will never be able to go find that exact copy again in a used bookstore

The Pale King could make a good tv show with great 80s a e s t h e t i c s

I will never not laugh at the greatly deserved ridicule of this hack fraud. Why bother reading someone who couldn't even live with himself?

The only sincere moment in the life of David Foster Wallace was when he kicked away the chair. The rest of his life was a lie, the new sincerity was a joke whose punchline was the creaking of a leather belt around the rafter.

His literary career was a menagerie of self help lies told to keep his depression at bay - the audience pussy and drugs were the ghosts at that feast of hypocrisy.

The depression was warranted because behind all the gimmicks and the self awareness and the bandannas was no discernible talent.

>welcome to the water

mmmhahaha
welcome to the water, kid

Currently reading it, fucking fantastic.
Much more insightful piece of work than le quirky drug addicts and their search for le ultimate pleasure.

Post a passage

Just googled a passage so whatever
It was the obetrolling passage
>tfw he described my autism better than I could had ever done it
I even have used some adhd pills and got a pretty similar high to what he is describing, I think it is some sort of controlled psychosis/mania
But I stopped using them because they also trigged the depressions :(
If I relate too much to the way this guy writes does it mean I will end up killing myself?

Not that guy but here's my favourite page so far

i have like 100 pages left and want to finish it before this thread dies, which should be easy

No discernable talent
He can't think
He can't write

I think I'm getting what Bloom was aiming it with this phrase. DFW wrote in a conversational tone that just got his ideas out with minimal effort. There was no effort in trying to construct art it was just speech.

What Bloom meant is that he has zero talent, even in speech

So, it's all tax policy and no dragons and shit? Fuck that