If you're a fan of Wallace's stuff, I highly recommend The Pale King, even unfinished, which it definitely is. It's still a joy to read. However, it's not the book to pick up as an introduction to his stuff.

The frustrating thing, for me, was to see in the 'Notes and Asides' how much more there would have been to the novel had he lived to finish it.

But the core is there, the core being his attempt to answer certain questions about how to live in a world where we're threatened by either boredom or too much information, all the time. How do we pay attention to things that matter? In a way, the themes here are one level down from those in Infinite Jest. If Infinite Jest was about the effects of our desire to always be entertained, to have every moment be pleasurable, The Pale King is about the the emotions and cultural experiences that brought us to that desire for constant pleasure. ( )

Al recién llegado David F. Wallace, los agentes del Centro Regional de Examen de la Agencia Tributaria de Peoria, Illinois, le parecen de lo más normal. A medida que se adentra en la tediosa y repetitiva rutina de su trabajo, conocerá la magnífica variedad de personalidades que han sentido la llamada de hacienda. Su llegada coincide, además, con el recrudecimiento de fuerzas conspiratorias que pugnan por despojar el trabajo del rastro de humanidad y dignidad que todavía queda.

I couldn't give this book a higher rating because it's just a glimpse of what the finished book would have been like. This reads like a first draft of a possibly brilliant book, as expected from DFW, but I couldn't help but sense that it would turn out to be very much like Infinite Jest, though it differs thematically it seems like a spiritual successor. Which is both a good and a bad thing, I guess. From the endnotes in which he clearly states where the story was going, it seemed to be much more interesting than the brief, jumbled scenes we got to read. The long conversation between Meredith Rand and Drinion stands out for me, as well as DW's arrival at the REC. It seems an interesting point would have been made regarding discipline (as opposed to boredom which has been what most critics/reviewers focused on). But alas, we'll never know. I think DFW knew he would have a hard time topping Infinite Jest (if not in literary quality, at least in people's perceptions of its quality and cultural relevance) and that's what made it a lengthy and ultimately impossible job for him to finish it. But it is a very enjoyable ride. You never get tired of reading DFW, even if it's unpolished. I'll have to read all of his essay and short story collections to get my fix now, but this book provided a momentary relief from the emptyness left by his passing. ( )

Seriously genius - I can’t wait to read Infinite Jest someday

AB ( )

This is perhaps the worst of DFW's late (published) work. When one understands the enormous amount of editing that goes into DFW's wordy, effortless passages, one begins to appreciate how far this book is from meeting DFW's own standards of publication. After having produced Oblivion which displays a masterful refinement of his early work (and has produced a lasting effect on the genre) one must ask, what, exactly, does one come away with after having read The Pale King. For the asaccharine reviewer, this is a small refinement of Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way which was already one of his weakest works. ( )