On the posthumous publication of The Pale King, The Daily Beast gathered together 6 leading novelists to talk about David Foster Wallace’s influence on them, his surprising humor, and his final work.
How do you solve a problem like The Pale King? Reading the final, unfinished novel by David Foster Wallace—which was edited and sequenced by Michael Pietsch from a mass of papers left behind by the author after his suicide in 2008—presents a thicket of interpretive challenges. To review as a traditional novel, or not? To process it with extra-literary, biographical details in mind, or else try to experience it in a manner as close to a completed work as may prove possible?
In many ways, The Pale King is an indisputably essential addition to Wallace’s bibliography—since it expands on themes Wallace had worked with in Infinite Jest, as well as in his widely read Kenyon College commencement address. In the 547 pages of The Pale King that Pietsch has selected for us to read, we benefit from Wallace’s attention to subjects such as religion, the civic consequences of the tax code, and what boredom means in contemporary American life. Wallace’s play of mind across these subjects is indelible and at times hilarious—even during stretches when the prose or character-sketching may feel less than fully figured out.
And yet, because knocking an unfinished, posthumous work of fiction for its lack of polish seems not only unfair but slightly off-point as a critical response, The Daily Beast and Newsweek decided to assemble a half-dozen novelists—each of whom published his or her debut in the post-Infinite Jest-era—to talk about Wallace’s legacy, how to approach The Pale King, and what it all might mean for the state of American fiction.
Go to The Daily Beast to read this discussion.
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