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Wed, 06 Apr 2011

After writing that blog post yesterday about how I haven't been reading much this year, I decided to pick up The Pale King and burn through a serious chunk of it. Um. Yeah.

I can't read this book.

I love David Foster Wallace's writing and I consider myself a pretty big fan. Infinite Jest was -- I'll go ahead and say it -- the best reading experience of my life. I've read a lot of his essays and I've never been sorry that I did. I listened to The Broom of the System audiobook, which was a mistake, but the problem was not at all the book but the format I chose to experience it in.

The thing about DFW (especially in the long form) is that you have to trust him implicitly in order to make his writing worthwhile. Reading Infinite Jest, you get at least 150 pages in before there's any inkling of a point, and even then it's only a minor inkling. The story doesn't really begin to coalesce until about halfway through the book.

I like to think of it like jumping out of a plane and trusting that the parachute will, eventually, open. But at first, you have this panicky free-fall where all of your instincts scream at you that what is happening right now is the worst thing ever. It takes a lot of courage to ignore those instincts, enjoy the fall, and admit that what you're experiencing is actually fantastic.

But The Pale King is an unfinished novel. How can you trust an unfinished novel? I can't, that's for sure.

I think if the book was as funny and entertaining as Infinite Jest, I would still enjoy the read. And even though I'm only about one-fifth of the way into the book, I'm pretty sure this is going relatively nowhere.

Consider this line from a review of the book in Esquire magazine:

You don't have to read it in a couple days or even a couple months. I'm not sure you even need to read it in any particular order. It's not that kind of book.

Hm. It's a rave review. All the reviews I've read are rave reviews. Who wants to be the only person to diss a long-awaited posthumously published book by one of the greatest American writers of all time?

Then there's this quote from the book's Editor's Note by Michael Pietsch:

The pages of the manuscript were edited only lightly. One goal was to make characters' names consistent (David invented new names constantly) and to make place names, job titles, and other factual matters match up throughout the book. Another was to correct obvious grammatical errors and word repetitions. Some chapters of the manuscript were designated "Zero drafts" or "freewriting," David's terms for first tries, and included notes such as "Cut by 50% in next draft." I made occasional cuts for sense or pace, or to find an end point for a chapter that trailed off unfinished.

Yeah, that doesn't inspire confidence. Sure, the book might be pretty good, but I can't imagine that it's anywhere near the book we would have seen if DFW had lived to finish it.

I'll keep it around of course and most likely I'll pick it up now and then, maybe reading portions of it as if they are short stories when I'm in the mood for that kind of thing. There is one character I encountered that I'd like to learn more about.

But right now, no way. Sorry, DFW. I just can't.

[filepath: /assessment/reading]