21st Century Literature discussion

Discussion of section 21-30 in "The Pale King"

Where is everybody? :(

Indeed. I confess I did borrow a hard copy of the text from the library (after reading an audible edition), but couldn't cope with the size of the text. I guess I need to buy a Kindle version, but funds don't permit at the moment. Pity I wouldn't mind talking about this in more depth, but without the text to hand I just can't. (My memory's almost as bad as my eyesight...

Maybe if you ask us a leading question!!! I, for one, will always do my best to answer.

I'm in the same boat. I did the audio version. Ask me a question and I'll respond ... :) I did check out the book from the library, but mostly just to get a feel for the book.

Gosh I wish he'd lived to see this published. I think many of my problems with the book would have been fixed. Looking forward to reading Infinite Jest, though. Good writing!

KJ wrote: "Looking forward to reading Infinite Jest, though. Good writing! "

Oh, so am I. But I'm definitely buying the Kindle version. I borrowed the hardback from the library. It's huge (and heavy) and the print is small.

NB What were your problems with this book?

Sophia wrote: "NB What were your problems with this book? "

Loved the writing, but what was his point? Was he just squeezing my shoes?

No, I don't think he was. I think there are a lot - and I mean a lot - of very serious points being made.

Tom McCarthy writing in the New York Times called it a "...grand parable of postindustrial culture or “late capitalism". Which it is, of course, but to my mind it's essentially about boredom: how we've come to justify (because we must, or go insane) why it is we persist in doing boring jobs and leading boring lives.

Sophia wrote: "No, I don't think he was. I think there are a lot - and I mean a lot - of very serious points being made.

Tom McCarthy writing in the New York Times called it a "...grand parable of postindustri..."

Spot on, Sophia!

At some points, it struck me that DFW was doing with the story what the story was about. If it is partly about the nothingness of modern work, can he make the fiction mirror the claim about the culture. I think he does. Also, he was intensely interested in the art of writing, so sometimes, it's best to enjoy his writing one sentence sat a time. I am terribly biased because he is my favorite writer.

Carl wrote: "At some points, it struck me that DFW was doing with the story what the story was about. If it is partly about the nothingness of modern work, can he make the fiction mirror the claim about the culture. I think he does"

How right you are. And yet he never bores and his work is never monotonous. Genius.

I mentioned in 1-10 that I think it's lovely. But I also think that when you're dealing with a beloved writer you're more likely to be hard on them if they're alive. Dead, there is a reluctance to do the sort of paring that would have made this even better.

@ Deborah - I'm not sure if you had access to the forward/editor's note, but the editoral process was quite difficult, considering the state of the papers left behind. For those reading without access to said note, the gist is that a great deal of the material is not only more or less unedited, but mostly without a guide to where in the book it belonged. Only a few sections were in what little overview he left behind. It's an interesting story, I'll see if I can find it someplace.

ps, I know it's been referenced, but if you haven't read it, it doesn't help.

Oh, and another note...a couple of you mentioned you wished it were at the end of the book, and didn't know if certain sections would be here as opposed to there...I think if you've read any of say, Infinite Jest then that aleatoric possibility isn't as troublesome perhaps? Some sections can just float around. DFW, though my initial reading of him (again, in Infinite Jest was profoundly negative..eventually brought me around to understanding that when we lost him to his terrible disease (if you haven't, consider reading the story from his father, published someplace..) we lost perhaps the most significant writer in the English language of the recent decades.

I did hear the editor's note. But I think it reinforced my opinion that they treated the work very delicately. Which is, I think, both good and perhaps not so good.

Will wrote: "ps, I know it's been referenced, but if you haven't read it, it doesn't help.

Oh, and another note...a couple of you mentioned you wished it were at the end of the book, and didn't know if certain..."

That's a very good point, Will. I'm one of the ones that wish the editor's note had come at the end of the novel and it is really for purely psychological reasons. Because I read that forward before embarking on the novel and because DFW seems to have a style that feels like he labored (please note I'm not saying it is a labor to read) over every word, I can't shake the feeling that there is no way someone was able to organize this in the same way that DFW would have eventually presented it to his editor.

Essentially, the whole time I read the novel I couldn't stop asking myself, "Is this really where he would have wanted this chapter? Would he have kept this sentence?" and so on.

Jason, I think you're right.

Of course you're right, but death has a way of blunting human ambitions. I'm sure many things were NOT how he would have had it, but we can't wish for what isn't possible. I don't know, as an artist, I have an easier time accepting a work of art as separate from it's creator than many people seem to. Creation is like birth, not only in the act of pure creation from the ether, but in that from birth onwards, you're more of a custodian than a creator. Your relationship ends, in a way, after birth.

So I agree with you, but DFW would just want us to enjoy it and NOT think about those things, I feel fairly certain.

Point taken.

On the flip side many authors are also plagued with being unable to let their work go and to accept that in their own eyes the work will never be complete.

Kafka is a prime example of this where his instructions to Max Brod had been to destroy all of his unpublished work on his death. Brod ignored this to our benefit, but it still leaves us with something like The Trial which has chapters that are only half written thus leaving Kafka's true intent with the theme being in question.

Ultimately though you are correct in that The Pale King needs to be judged based on what DFW's widow and editor presented to us, and hopefully I will be able to get over my hang ups with it on re-reads of the novel.

Part of the difference here is whether you read the work for a legitimate structure or whether you read at the micro level, for the beauty of the phrasing. I think my perspective is changed because I followed all of the arguments on whether it should have been published after DFW died, and I just wanted to read it, so the intro couldn't slant my experience.

History has many examples of creators wishing their works unfinished destroyed upon their passing, and from their perspective it makes great sense. However (and I say this as a professional creator) we frequently don't know what's best for all of us. We'd be the poorer for Kafka's absence as stated earlier. We ARE the poorer for Chopin's wishes being carried out. Best perhaps to leave the pieces where we leave them, and hope the mercy of others sees the unfinished to whatever their deserved repose shall be.

By the way, Will, you don't believe for a minute that any of Infinite Jest is aleatoric, do you? It may seem that way to the reader, but the creator had a clear structure, which many have attempted to explain over the years with varying degrees of success.

Well, it reminds me of the extremely unfunny science joke it goes like this: A man is driving down the street, and gets pulled over. The police officer asks the man, 'Sir, do you know how fast you were going?' 'That depends,' answers the man, 'At what point?'
...
The point being there's a process involved, in that case acceleration, in this case selection. Sure, I accept IJ is placed just exactly as he wanted it. But I also accept that TPK clearly was not, and that even to the most familiar eyes, there was often a large amount of ambiguity and though it may sound bad to those that haven't written a book, symphony, or painted a mural, interchangeability. I have no doubt that given enough time TPK would have. But I also have no doubt that there was probably a long while during the process where IJ was much the same. And many of those choices aren't hugely important in the final effect. To use another example, from cooking, sometimes adding the dry ingredients before the wet makes all the difference, other times the final dish just isn't different in a measurable way. That doesn't take anything away from it, and certainly there were un-made choices in TPK that would have made it better we can never know. But still, theres a magical embryonic state where even humans can be either male or female. So can novels. We just don't usually catch them in the middle of such transformations. It's a bit like seeing a cross section of a working engine, or that cow they put the plexiglass porthole in the side of. It's surprising because of the unexpected vantage point, fascinating at times, but generally we prefer not to see the inside of the cow.

I understand your point, Will. I've been reading the new DFW biography, and two things seem clear: DFW was far more intelligent than even his fans give him credit for, and he was highly tuned to both philosophical message of his work and the logical, even mathematical presentation in his work.

My contention would be that while TPK may indeed be haphazard in organization, IJ is one of the most neatly organized pieces of chaotic art that I know of...

Another interesting picture from the biography seems to be that the structure would be in his mind and his writing was just straightaway! That portrays some amount of genius. It's one thing to move things about after they are crafted and make them fit but it's entirely another when an author is able to have a complete representation in his mind before the creation begins.

well, it depends. That's misleading in many ways because to some extent, all real artists do this to one degree or another. I hate using "real artists" but I can't escape that there are many who like to call themselves artists but don't really engage in the actual art too much..my book recommendation later attempts to justify this.

Some artists prepare a work by doing many many sketches and arrange things in their head, then spitting the more or less final work out. However, they are usually also doing preliminary works which are edited in the process or destroyed as they lose their usefulness along the way. In music, Beethoven would be a good example of this, where huge chunks of music would just appear, but other chunks would face long, brutal self-editing with many corrections, where we have the physical paper to see his work. Like DFW and Beethoven, often times these papers showing the working out of the themes and structures are often just tossed out because after all, they serve no use to them...even if it interests us. Other artists will hone a work down after tons of other work, it's like writing 100 books, and keeping the 101st. There's a brilliant book, Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity written by David W. Galenson that makes a strong case for two principle archetypes of this kind, while still showing real life examples of those that used mixed methodologies. Large scale structures of this kind require a ton of preliminary work and careful planning in addition to the creative work, so I'd be careful in making assumptions about the process. The notes left about TPK clearly show (to me) a mixed bag of techniques that employ both Conceptual and Experimental methods to achieve the goal. The fact there were so many chunks with either mixed messages about placement, or unmarked placement, the fact that there was placeholder language (shoes squeezing, for example) that conveyed the idea without being bogged down in the exact colors shows this. To me, there's NO question of his genius, but like Mozart and Beethoven, critical (and now historically reinforcing) misinterpretations of systemic working methods obscure just how disciplined and organized they were in ADDITION to being supremely creative. I think to some extent people find the idea of the genius as just effortlessly tossing off work comforting, because the idea that having to still wake up early and work all day and night AND be that good is a little off putting.

I hate to fill the discussion with this stuff, but the conversation keeps sitting in my personal homeland. Couldn't we talk about subjects less inflammatory to me, like gay marriage or politics or something?