David Foster Wallace's "The Pale King"
Wallace's Third, Unfinished Novel to be Published Posthumously
Mar 21, 2009
Though he met with an untimely death in 2008, David Foster Wallace's fans will be able to add one more piece of work to their bookshelves in 2010.
Publishers Agree to Release Wallace's Unfinished Novel
Publishers Little, Brown has agreed to published Wallace's third novel, The Pale King, in its unfinished form. According to a statement released by Little, Brown, the novel exceeds "several thousand words" and in addition to the manuscript portion, will also include "notes, outlines and other material" related to the novel.
The Pale King and its Origins
Early information regarding the content of the novel has been released to the public, in addition to portions which have already began popping up online. The premise of The Pale King's storyline involves the universal concept of boredom and how it specifically applies to a group of IRS employees in Illinois. According to an article in the March 9, 2009 issue of The New Yorker, the novel "expands on the virtues of mindfulness and sustained concentration...[and shows how] boredom can be an antidote to our national dependence on entertainment".
It is interesting to note just how much hands-on research Wallace did in preparation for writing what would become The Pale King. He took accounting classes, labored over IRS publications and assembled a copious amount of information related to concepts such as boredom and mindfulness.
The Pale King follows Wallace's second novel, Infinite Jest, which was published in 1996. The gap in time between both novels was filled in by smaller literary pieces published in such magazines as Harper's (A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again) and Gourmet Magazine (Consider the Lobster). Wallace also managed to publish collections of essays and short stories during this period as well. Fans of Wallace have been known to be very patient while waiting for his next novel, the average time between them spans on average a decade: The Broom of the System (1987), Infinite Jest (1996) and The Pale King (2010).
Wallace began writing his highly ambitious third novel somewhere around 2000. It is speculated that during the time Wallace was working on The Pale King, he was also battling most intensely against his own inner torment. The process of writing The Pale King was a struggle for Wallace, who seemed satisfied with the characters he was fleshing out, but according to The New Yorker, "the shape of the book evaded him". Until the time of his death, it is clear that Wallace was never pleased with the state of his work in progress.
The drafts of his unfinished third novel were discovered in his garage by his wife after Wallace took his own life on September 12, 2008.
A excerpt from The Pale King can be read on The New Yorker 's website.
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