Few things are more intriguing than an unfinished novel. With fitting symmetry, two books have been published posthumously in the past two years: Nabokov’s The Original Laura and Jose Saramango’s Cain. This year, Little Brown is to publish The Pale King, an unfinished work by David Foster Wallace – a claimant to the title of Great American Novelist, who took his own life in September 2008.
Publication has been delayed twice by what one publisher described as ‘entirely foreseeable circumstances’. Obviously, sensitivity is paramount in this tragic case, but it seems that The Pale King is finally ready to be crowned. Precise publication details remain obscure, but editors on both side of the Atlantic are applying delicate gloss to Foster Wallace’s manuscript, and doubtless final legal issues are being resolved.
As to the book’s content, only the Penguin elect are in the know. They say:
‘David Foster Wallace’s final and most ambitious undertaking – an audacious and hilarious look into the abyss of ordinary life.
The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Centre in Peoria, IL, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and
repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces
within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.
‘The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace’s death, but it is a deeply intriguing and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook.’
Which sounds well enough, but ‘fearless and original’ will cause elation and disquiet in equal measure. Foster Wallace has a legion of fevered admirers, including Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith and Jonathan Franzen. Meanwhile, a more heartless element has pronounced him ‘boring’. Certainly, his most famous work, Infinite Jest, is for the intrepid rather the faint-hearted. Reading it is a labour of love that demands absolute devotion. The prose is anything but leaden; but it is very intricate or ‘maximalist’ as several theoreticians have termed it. The reams of footnotes and digressions are beguiling if you like that sort of thing, excruciating if you don’t.
Foster Wallace’s books should not be judged by their covers; the best impression is gained by looking at pages 80-140. Infinite Jest was brilliant, but like ris de veau à la financière once is probably enough. So I’ll examine The Pale King’s entrails, and then decide whether or not to read it. In the meantime, the New Yorker has published a Foster Wallace short story, Backbone. Demanding without being dense, it involves the reader in a boy’s inexplicable quest to kiss every square inch of his body. It is science rather than art and no less beautiful for it; but it’s certainly an acquired taste.
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