The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

Fins Left

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I saw a couple interviews with the editor who finished the book. They were all making great comments about it. Since it is supposed to be funny on some level and all are calling the author brilliant, I thought I'd check out the preview on books.google.com.

(Loosing the fact that the author died before completion... and all related to that...)

I didn't expect Dave Barry ha, ha... type funny... But, I feel like I'm missing something. The preview on google has unnumbered pages of long, long, long paragraphs. There's little dialog... I've never read any of David Foster Wallace's work - everyone spoke so highly of his writing. I can usually read anything, even if only to study the technique, but not this.

Please help me, what am I missing here? I'm trying to understand the brilliance that everyone else is seeing. I feel thoroughly stupid that I can't tease out even a clue from the portions that I've read so far.
 

seun

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I wouldn't worry about it at all. One person's sense of humour is another's not amused. So what if the book is someone's idea of hilarity? It doesn't have to be yours.
 

Jamesaritchie

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You can't go by the preview. This is a novel, and you have to read it all. It's very episodic, jumps from one thing to another, and sections of it are extremely funny, others are not.
 

dangerousbill

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I saw a couple interviews with the editor who finished the book. They were all making great comments about it. Since it is supposed to be funny on some level and all are calling the author brilliant, I thought I'd check out the preview on books.google.com.

Did the word 'literary' appear anywhere in the review? This may be a sign that the author is considered so intelligent, so brilliant, so many chromosomes ahead of mere mortals, that we ordinary people can't hope to appreciate his stuff.

Some authors, even live ones, build whole careers on a foundation of obscurity.