The last time Michael Pietsch saw David Foster Wallace was at a dinner party, in Los Angeles, in the spring of 2008. Pietsch was visiting California for Book Expo America, the country’s largest annual trade fair, and took the opportunity to arrange a meeting with Wallace, who rarely left the state.
About a dozen people were present, including Bonnie Nadell, Wallace’s literary agent; his wife, Karen Green; and the humourist David Sedaris, a long-time admirer of Wallace’s writing. Pietsch, the publisher of Little, Brown and Wallace’s editor, remembers it as “a lovely dinner, full of laughter.”
“He seemed in good spirits,” Pietsch says. “[But] he was very, very thin. I was shocked when I saw him, at how thin he was. He said, ‘Oh, it’s this stomach thing, don’t get me started.’ The story that he and his wife were telling people was that he had some terrible stomach infection that had made it impossible to eat for a long time, and he had been hospitalized for that. That was what they had to say about his health.”
The truth was for several months Wallace had been afflicted with severe depression. A little more than three months later, on Sept. 12, 2008, Wallace hung himself on the patio of his house in Claremont, Calif. He was 46 years old.
Wallace was, and is, one of the titans of contemporary literature.
He was the writing equivalent of a Swiss army knife;
whether as a scholar,
an essayist,
a journalist,
a novelist
or a short story writer,
he had the right tool.
His 1996 novel Infinite Jest, a footnote-laden epic that clocks in at more than 1,000 pages, is one of the pillars of post-modernism — you don’t read it so much as get flattened by it.
A single work in any of his three short story collections might contain more ideas than an entire novel.
His journalism was detailed and illuminating; the last book he published before his death was a chronicle of John McCain’s ill-fated run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.
He had not, however, published a novel since 1996. That changes this month with the release of The Pale King, an unfinished novel that is arguably the most anticipated book of the year.
It’s a Monday morning in mid-March and Pietsch, dressed in a slim-fitting suit, is in his midtown Manhattan office. On the table in front of his desk are hardcover copies of The Pale King — at this point, a month before publication, these are highly sought-after by the literati.
The cover image is of a card, the king of clubs, through which has been carefully woven out of a shredded copy of one of Wallace’s tax returns. It was designed by Karen Green, his widow.
It was Pietsch’s wife who informed him of Wallace’s death; she’d read a report online. A moment later, he received a call from Nadell confirming the news. “It was heartbreaking,” he says.
Though they didn’t work together until Infinite Jest, Pietsch had known Wallace since the late 1980s, when he was asked to read a story — “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” about a group of actors heading to a reunion for everyone who’s ever appeared in a McDonald’s commercial — that Wallace was debating whether or not to include in Girl with Curious Hair, his first collection of short fiction.
“I was no fun to work around for quite a long time after that; I was just overcome by grief, constantly,” says Pietsch of the weeks and months after Wallace’s death.
“I felt awful for not having understood his illness, and not having known he was depressed. But those are the things he chose to keep private. I feel much more accommodated to it now than I did two years ago.
The fact that all his fiction about damaged people passed through my hands, and I had not guessed at his personal struggles, made me feel stupid.”
Pietsch travelled to Claremont. He’d heard bits and pieces about the novel Wallace was working on, mainly from Nadell, but little else. Even though Wallace published regularly since Infinite Jest — two short story collections and several volumes of non-fiction — he was aware that people were questioning the wait between novels. “He kind of wanted to be left alone,” Pietsch says.
Wallace, in one of his final acts, left approximately 250 pages of a manuscript-in-progress on his desk; this was a section of the book he was apparently considering sending to Little, Brown.
Nadell and Green had already explored Wallace’s office, collecting scores of material: computer discs, books, bins and boxes full of notes and earlier drafts of the novel.
Pietsch returned to New York with about 2,500 pages, and began the long task of constructing The Pale King.
“This project has been kind of all-consuming,” says Pietsch, whose only other experience editing a posthumous work came in 1985, when he worked on Ernest Hemingway’s bullfighting memoir The Dangerous Summer.
There was no outline,
no list of chapters,
no clues as to where Wallace planned to take the narrative.
The chapters were not in sequence.
The names of characters constantly changed.
Pietsch thought he’d discovered the novel’s first chapter — the one which begins “Author here” — until he found a footnote explaining precisely why it wasn’t the first chapter. He laughs: “I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t even have a starting point!’ ”
Still, the process “was sometimes exhilarating, delightful and joyful because I felt in his presence.
And at other times heartbreaking because I saw how hard it was for him. You can’t read this book without seeing pain.”
The Pale King revolves around a group of new recruits at an IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Ill. — Wallace took accounting classes and even studied mid-1980s accounting laws, from the period the book is set in — and the triviality of their day-to-day lives.
Woven through the narrative are rants, fragments, character sketches — a boy who constantly sweats, another who wants nothing more than to kiss every inch of his body — many of which offset the headache-inducing boredom found in many sections of the book.
Though even at its most monotonous — and that’s the point, really — The Pale King is an impressive work; a testament to both Wallace and Pietsch.
“He took on about the biggest challenge that is possible for a writer to take on,” Pietsch says,
“which is to write a novel that looks straight at all of life’s most
difficult,
repetitious,
tedious,
overly complex minutiae,
and try to make a novel that is
powerful
and hilarious
and moving
that’s about the subject matter that almost all writers just brush aside in order to get at the drama. … I believe he set himself just about the hardest task a writer has ever set himself.”
If it seems contradictory for a writer whom some would argue possessed the most exciting voice of his generation would be the one to tackle the most mundane topic imaginable, to Wallace mundaneness was important.
The things that you do every day,
the things that become second nature,
that become almost invisible
— that is life.
Explains Pietsch:
“He was trying to write about boredom and tedium and repetition,
and how those are essential to joy and meaning and love and everything important in life.
He was really trying to grasp this gigantic, gigantic subject, and it’s understandable that it was hard.”
Pietsch never spoke to Wallace about posthumous releases, and isn’t sure what he’d think about an incomplete version of The Pale King seeing the light of day.
“I don’t think there’s a writer alive who wants his work seen before it’s done,” he says.
But “if it’s a writer whose work you care about, I think it’s of great interest to see what they’re working on.
Hemingway left a lot of unfinished work, and a lot of it was quite revealing. …
I think it can add to one’s understanding of the body of work that was published during the lifetime, and sometimes just holds its own pleasures.
I think the pleasures of The Pale King are extraordinary.”
His colleagues think he’s done a good job. “[Pietsch] did an incredible job without being invasive,” says Deborah Treisman, Wallace’s long-time editor at The New Yorker. “He didn’t say ‘Here’s a draft, and I’m now going to write the novel for David.’ He said ‘Here’s a draft … and that’s what it’s going to stay.’ ”
The Pale King likely won’t stay in its current form forever. Pietsch explored the possibility of an e-book version, which would allow readers to, in essence, remix the novel, before running into technical constraints.
In any case, everything relating to
The Pale King — including material Pietsch left on the cutting room floor — will soon be
freely accessible at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas,
which acquired Wallace’s archives, ranging from childhood poems to correspondences with his copy editors, as well as a “good amount” of
essays and fiction that could one day be published.
So while the version of The Pale King now in stores represents one interpretation of the material, there may be others.
“I think that Pietsch is very aware that he’s constructing something that is not Wallace’s — that is partly his,” says Molly Schwartzburg, the centre’s curator of literature, on the phone from Austin.
“If there’s any writer whose readers are going to want to think seriously about ways of reimagining this book — I mean, this is the most passionate reading public I think a writer could have.
I’m sure we’ll have lots of people in here reading the drafts,
studying them,
imagining different scenarios,
and writing at least scholarship on the editing of The Pale King.”
While reading it, though, the last thing on my mind was scholars debating the sequencing of chapters. Rather, it was the sense that this can’t possibly be how Wallace’s story ends. That this must only be a footnote.
“It’s a sadly beautiful novel,” Pietsch says, “and I’m just sorry that he’s not here to write another one.”
• The Pale King by David Foster Wallace is published by Little, Brown ($29.99).
Aug. 10, 2016 Kathie Sutherland: I was cleaning out my drawer and I found this. I got this way back in Creative non-fiction class in Professional Writing in 2007.
Everyone has a story, and that story is all that is left when our lives are done. During our lifetime, we pass on our story in many ways:
writing it as a best selling autobiography;
a memoir that proves to be a portrait,
a novel,
creative nonfiction essays
or a series of magazine articles.
For many people, story legacy does not have to be literary and certainly not a published work.
Story is also found in
private journals,
paintings,
quilts,
scrapbook pages,
plays,
and my personal favourite poetry.
Our individual creativity communicates our story.
An “Ethical Will,” in which
we bequeath our values,
not our valuables,
is an ancient and honourable way to share what matters to us.
It is possible for all of us at any age, and at any life changing point in our lives, to share our values by creating a document addressed to our families, friends and communities — a written legacy of our beliefs, traditions and values.
My goal is to inspire you to “Listen In.” Remember, Reflect, and Record this legacy in your own unique way.
I’m here to walk with you, provide companionship as you ask important life questions such as “Who am I? and “What is my Purpose?”
I stimulate your memories,
help you plan
and take action on creating story.
My workshops, presentations, and one on one sessions are filled with writing exercises to encourage the expression of your values, whatever they may be.
Sept. 7, 2023: Her website isn't here anymore.
Here's her Twitter account:
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