Monday, March 2, 2009

NEW BOOK FROM DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

The fellow cleared his throat. Donne, of course, called it lethargie, and for a time it seems conjoined somewhat with melancholy, saturninia, otiositas, tristitia; that is, to be confused with sloth and torpor and lassitude and eremia and vexation and distemper and attributed to spleen—for example, see Winchilsea’s “black jaundice,” or, of course, Burton.

A new novel by David Foster Wallace is scheduled for release next year.

"The Pale King," excerpted in The New Yorker magazine edition coming out today, is set in an Internal Revenue Service office in Illinois in the 1980s
. (link below)

The novel is long and unfinished, but DFW fans should snatch it up. According to Wallace's publisher, Little, Brown and Company, the novel runs "several hundred thousand words and will include notes, outlines, and other material."

Wallace, best known for the novel "Infinite Jest," was a longtime suffer from depression and committed suicide last fall. He was 46, and had been working on "The Pale King" for several years. According to a New Yorker piece, he was struggling to top "Infinite Jest" until his death.


Read "The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace's struggle to surpass Infinite Jest," here.

Read an excerpt from "The Pale King" here.

A song, "Living with David Foster Wallace" by Blammo. Click button:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is very sad about David Foster Wallace and it will be a bittersweet experience reading his new book. Thank you for this article.

Bob Rini said...

Very sad. People suffering from depression need to get help. Obviously, it's not a matter of intelligence or DFW would have been able to "think his way out of it." It might be simple. We're taught to be stoic, but no one would think of enduring a broken arm at home. As long as their is a stigma about seeking help for depression, more people will continue to suffer.