The Pale King, by David Foster Wallace

Long stretches of superlative, captivating writing in a non-linear, even more discohesive than normal for Wallace, narrative. The backstory, of course is that Mr. Wallace died before completing this novel and what we have was patched together by his editor (the same one who worked with him on Infinite Jest – see earlier post) and his wife. A major theme of the text is “attention” and “concentration” in the setting of boredom. How navigating the boredom of daily life can lead to a transcendent understanding of one’s existence, or even just a transcendent existence if you recall Drinion levitating on his chair while listening to Meredith Rand wax on about her psychiatric issues. Was Wallace bored himself? He uses, and reportedly researched extensively, the IRS in the mid 1980’s as a platform on which to discuss this idea. Tax return review by the IRS was a manual task at that time. Rooms full of people poring over tax returns to identify which ones should be audited. Sounds like a boring task to me. But who knows? Hell, I look through a microscope for hours every day and generally find that interesting. But the mind tends to wander with repetition and the ability to sustain concentration is a skill, no doubt. The novel reads more like a collection of short stories around a central theme. The characters from one story/chapter are loosely connected, at best, and really only have in common working at the IRS center. But you don’t need a cohesive narrative to enjoy this work – it vibrates with fantastic, humorous and insightful writing.