The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

8.5/10 dropps

There is a palpably frustrating quality inherent in unfinished novels. But it would be fallacious to suggest that unfinished works of fiction are without merit; on the contrary: high school students have been suffering through Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales for hundreds of years now. Though unfinished, no one before Shakespeare has contributed as much to English literature. Nearly all of Franz Kafka’s writings are incomplete. Unfinished works can be fantastically insightful and pleasurable to read. According to reports, Wallace stated in 2007 that he had finished about a third of the novel. By the time of his death in 2008, Wallace had been working on The Pale King for twelve years. It was to be his first novel since the classic Infinite Jest.
What Wallace left behind is clearly unfinished, but the third available to the living is hypnotizing. There is not much in the way of a plot. There are five characters who may have been key players (the novel doesn’t quite get that far). Sentences flow with a lengthy eloquence. Wallace writes as Thomas Pynchon would if Pynchon were paid by the word. Some chapters are only a few sentences, two or three are nearly a hundred pages long.

Despite the strengths and obstacles inherent in Wallace’s final novel, Wallace does manage to establish many of the themes who presumably would have explored further had he lived. What semblance of plot there is revolves around those who work for the IRS. Everyday, IRS agents are required to perform an inane, but endless series of paperwork. Wallace proposes that IRS agents face such a high level of potentially devastating boredom that the thankless tasks IRS agents perform has a some sort of heroic quality. Why would anyone become an IRS agent? Wallace answers this question by detailing the back stories and conversations of the characters present in the IRS agency where the main character works.

When Infinite Jest was released in 1996, critics hailed the work as a comedy, much to Wallace’s chagrin. He had intended the novel to be a monumentally sad piece of literature. There is a melancholy quality to The Pale King, primarily stemming from the titanic levels of boredom experienced by the characters. But it is also beautiful and hilarious in parts. An early chapter describing the death of an IRS agent in the form of a two-page report had me laughing out loud. Wallace introduces the main character by including a fictional author’s foreword where chapter 9 should be in order to manipulate a loophole in corporate policy. Furthermore, the main character’s name is also David Wallace. The Pale King was released on April 15th – tax day.
For many of Wallace’s readers, his main draw has always been his expansive mind. Pages brim with Wallace’s insightful ideas and philosophical musings. Though incomplete, The Pale King does manage to stand as its own respectable work of literature. It is a shame that it won’t be finished, and that the novel will forever be discussed in tandem with Wallace’s death.

-John Jamieson