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"He felt in a position to say he knew now that hell had nothing to do with fires and frozen troops. Lock a fellow in a windowless room to perform rote tasks just tricky enough to make him think, but still rote, tasks involving numbers that connected to nothing he'd ever see or care about, a stack of tasks that never went down, and nail a clock to the wall where he can see it, and just leave the man there to his mind's own devices."
David Foster Wallace was an American author best known for Infinite Jest, a notoriously difficult book. He took his own life in 2008, and what we have in The Pale King was assembled from an unfinished draft and a collection of notes he left for others to find. My rather flippant review of Infinite Jest can be found here.
Long story short, I wasn't a huge fan of Infinite Jest, though I didn't find it as turgid or as deliberately obscure as a friend led me to believe. Infinite Jest was definitely a struggle to get through, but I found it much easier going than other postmodern books like Gravity's Rainbow or The Flounder. Extensive breaks were required in the midst of reading Infinite Jest, but it wasn't that bad.
With The Pale King there's less "noise" surrounding both the novel and its author. You're not likely to approach this book without already knowing something about its author and having read something else by him, and the introduction makes it clear that this novel is unfinished. This introduction engenders a forgiving attitude in the reader, both with regard to the novel's own merits and Wallace's skill as a writer.
What's it about? Well, like the person who wrote the introduction I'm offering only my best guess, but if you ask me it's about political maneuvering within a particular branch of the IRS. On another level it's about boredom and how it shapes us as individuals. I can't think of any other major threads in this incomplete work, but there might be some.
Did I like it? Well, I found it easier to get through than Infinite Jest. There are some genuinely interesting passages in this book, even if I'm still not sure that all those chapters on the workings of the IRS were worth wading through. Upon finishing The Pale King I found my opinion of the author much improved, though I have to say I still prefer his nonfiction.
In case you haven't seen it, 2015's The End of the Tour, featuring Jason Segel as David Foster Wallace, is a good movie. As a writer Wallace continues to cast a long shadow, and whether you love him or hate him you can't deny his influence.
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