semester3annotation4

ANNO 4:

THE PALE KING

BY DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

*This annotation is a bit of a disaster because I’m so overwhelmed trying to write it. Because the subject is so intense and complex.

I usually think that the separation of form and content is so artificial that it's a stupid conversation. Until it comes to David Foster Wallace.

I always, passionately, completely love his content. In The Pale King more so than ever. This sort of inherent pain at/inherent problem with being alive. That we want to be constantly engaged with things, have all the cracks in our collective fantasy (of security, competence, narrative) filled in, so that we don't have to face ourselves. Being aware that we are alive, being unaware that we are alive (for example, Obetrolling, ch 22). Humility. Engagement. Wanting to be completely self-possessed (ie self-aware, self-sufficient. Not so needy and interconnected. Rather separate from, and above, and in some way in charge of. And yet the impossibility of this. Being so scared of being alive and not knowing what that means and so creating narratives, cultural and personal, that fill in or disregard or distract us from these questions (ie advertizing. p.145). How weird, surreal things get when reality and narrative diverge too far. One of my favorite parts of the book is the conversation in ch. 19 in which they discuss the future, and advertising, and basically how the perceived/agreed upon meaning of everything will have diverged so far from the actual meaning, that people will be so wrapped up in their fantasy reality which has this really complex relationship to actual reality, not exactly opposite but not lined up with it either. It's like the part in Infinite Jest where Hal et al are watching the younger kids play Eschaton, and there becomes the split between what's happening on the “map” versus what the kids are actually doing. It like split my brain open. It makes me want to laugh and scream. (Hysterically, both).

But his form often makes me nauseous. Like there's all these extra words. Like he's structuring his sentences just to give me a pounding headache. Like he won't stop making the same goddamn point over and over and over with only the slightest variation. Like there's all this excessive, irrelevant information crowding in, cluttering my head. Like his sentences are too long and full and make me sea-sick. Like he writes all this shit that seems like it should be funny but just feels sad.

I (of course) like his lack of cohesive narrative. The way all these instances sort of draw together into a certain question/set of questions/feeling of questions, draw me deeper into the questions but not really to a conclusion. I’ve always felt that a lot of his writing is based on ideas he has about the world, about what writing should do. Like that we impose plot (order, coherence) on the world for our own sakes, as a means of trying to understand; and that writing should engage readers, should help break open the narrative and the coherence, bring us into the questions, and into our lives. My theory is that that's why he likes to end things mid sentence. Or start leading us into plots only to drop them, unconcluded. As if to show us our desire for that to be the point, but disallow that from being the point. And all the while he has his real narrative which has nothing to do, really, with specific individuals and events, but with ideas, questions, fundamental problems of being alive and aware that you're alive.

I like how he can find epic dilemmas mirrored (or, rather, as fractals) in things like chiropracty, and a day at the IRS (which I think is kind of the point of the book).

I have somewhat of a problem with his writing (his fiction) because it feels overly thought out. As if he sees these things, has these ideas, sketches out a way to show them, and then fills it in with specific details, fills it in with his totally brilliant intellectual understanding of writing. But rarely do I feel he believes it. His characters and stories usually seem more like examples of something than like actual living, breathing, unpredictable organic structures. (Though they have all the qualities of organic structures, since he knows that they ought to.) They sort of feel like somebody's really advanced robot that they've plugged their entire brain into, that emulates human thought patterns and emotions in every possible way, but doesn't have the spark of consciousness. Reading him, I long for his surrender. Like he's so, so smart, but he could really find something if he'd let go of needing to understand it all.

The Pale King is fascinating because in it I’m pretty sure he realizes all this. Realizes that his complete understanding of everything doesn't get him in. All my notes up until close to the end were things like: he doesn't seem to be able to trust that we readers can/will understand what he's saying, and so he over-explains; and: his nervous need to be totally self-aware sort of kills. But I think this need is also important because it's true—a real feeling of need—for him and for a lot of us. But with this too I feel like he keeps himself at a distance, is too self-aware of the need to be self-aware, if that makes any sense. And conversely I think it keeps him from being able to move outside of it, see outside of it. If that makes any sense. These are all just feelings I’m working with, trying to figure, can't quite. That to actually write the need for control/understanding, he has to let go of that need to some degree) were in fact the experience he was trying to convey.

And then all the dialogue at the end of the book basically shows that he's been doing this on purpose. I mean, it talks about all of this as the issues/difficulties of living. (So I assume that it was on purpose throughout the book.) I’m putting examples at the end so that you don't have to read them if you don't want, because I know this paper is way too long.*

The really fascinating, crazy making thing about this book is: he seems to be talking about dissociation, intellectualization, and trying to show it via dissociation and intellectualization. Which is trippy, but I don't know how effective. Because though it's telling me all about this experience of being unable to get inside of an experience, it doesn't actually embody that for me, doesn't take me inside. (Though I go back and forth. Because he does give me the same feeling that my own brain gives me when it starts to do this, when it gets locked out of life—this sort of spinning, nearly suicidal nausea. Does that make it embodiment? And why do I think this is always fiction's job, to embody? And do I just dislike the writing because it makes me feel sick rather than sustained? Is it necessary for writing to make the reader feel good? Usually I’m nervous about writing/anything that makes me feel good, nervous that it's seducing me and tricking me.)

The other thing that fascinates me about this book is that where it resounds for me is in the shift that comes, nearly at the end, when it becomes apparent that the point of the book is all the running around, talking about and around, comprehension and theorizing and being unable to enter.** In a way I feel as though most of the book was in the service of—as set up to—to get the reader primed as it were, for this shift. Like he gets me all spun and tense and dissociated and nauseous and unable to exist in my body, my life, just so I can really feel the quiet of stepping in. And not only that, I feel like the proportions of the balance matter. That there has to be this great thick mass of stuff at the beginning relative to the clarity and precision of the end. This struck me when I read Good Old Neon, as well—that while I pretty much hated most of it, it might be needed, as contrast, or in interaction with, the end. [“This is the sort of shit we waste our lives thinking about.” ← is where it switches in that story.]

I think I like his non-fiction better (essays, but also the parts of this book where he speaks directly, as himself) because he can't help but be embedded. Because he does seem to believe. What I like about all of his work, what I end up reading his fiction, obsessively, for, is as a means of access to him. Because he makes me feel less alone—the things he talked about, the way he approached them, even the conclusions he seemed to come to, make perfect sense to my soul. It makes me feel almost peaceful, and definitely comforted. He is the story I am trying to read, not the stories that he wrote.

The thing that always breaks my heart about his writing is that it feels like he's trying with every bit of him. I feel like he means what he's doing, and saying, and is true in his efforts. With others who seem to be unable to let go of being in charge of/keep saying they're aware of everything I feel like it's petty insecurity (Tao Lin), but with Wallace I feel like its serious, deep, horrifying insecurity. That this is something he's really struggling with. That he's both using his brains against the reader (I mean, playing God, designing and plotting out rather than exploring and conversing) but simultaneously trying to break through that. I have the most total respect for him.***

Reading this book, I kept thinking of that Mary Oliver poem that everyone posts everywhere. Wild Geese. The lines: you do not have to be good./ you do not have to walk on your knees/for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting./ you only have to let the soft animal of your body/ love what it loves. Like, this is what his writing, or he, needed. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

***I 'm not sure that anything I’m saying here has any merit at all. I’m painfully aware of how fucking smart he was, so much smarter than I can even comprehend. I have considerable doubts that I’m not just missing the point entirely.

**[Because theoretically at this point he does enter. The writing suddenly becomes tighter, is more-embodied-less-described, etc. The really strange part for me is that even while this shift is evident, it feels so perfectly planned that I still don't quite believe it. It still feels like part of an elaborate story-problem.]

*Examples include:

“...believed in the interpenetrating dance of spine, nervous system, spirit, and cosmos as totality—in the universe as an infinite system of neural connections that had evolved, at it's highest point, an organism which could sustain consciousness of both itself and the universe at the same time, such that the human nervous system became the universe's way of being aware of and thus 'accessible [to]' itself.” (403-4)

“'They thought that diagnosis was the same as cure. That if you knew why, it would stop. Which is bullshit.' Meredith Rand says. 'You only stop if you stop.'” (486)

“'Certain parts you tend to repeat , or say over and over again only in a slightly different way. These parts add no new information, so these parts require more work to pay attention to...in those parts where you do repeat the same essential point or information in a slightly different way, the underlying motive, which I get the feeling is concern that what you're imparting might be unclear or uninteresting and must be recast and resaid in many different ways to assure yourself that your listener really understands you—this is interesting, and somewhat emotional, and it coheres in an interesting way with the surface subject of what Ed, in the story you're telling, is teaching you, and so in that respect even the repetitive or redundant elements compel interest and require little conscious effort to pay attention to, at least so far as I’m concerned.'” (501/2)