What we choose to pay attention to: More thoughts on the Pale King by David Foster Wallace

"That may sound all drippy-hippie, getting in touch with inner feelings and all that business. But based on my experience during that time, most people are always feeling something or adopting some attitude or choosing to pay attention to one thing or one part of something without even knowing that we are doing it. We do it automatically, like a heartbeat. Sometimes I would be sitting there in a room and become aware of how much effort it was to pay attention to just your heartbeat for more than a minute or so---it's almost as though your heartbeat wants to stay out of your awareness, like a rock star wanting avoiding the limelight. But it's there if you can double up and make yourself pay attention. Same with music, too, the doubling was being able to both listen very closely and also to feel whatever emotions the music evoked---because obviously that is why we are into music, that it makes us feel certain things, otherwise it would would be just noise--and not only have them, listening but be able to be aware of them..."
-David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, page 183

This was a very interesting quote to me. It does contain some of the qualities from the "This is Water Commencement Speech" that Wallace gave at Kenyon College. Although this section of the book is describing the effects of the character on Obetrol. I still think that it is a telling example on what it feels like to be alive. How hard it is to focus on certain things and how it is nice to be medicated...more to come

Truth in Fiction: More thoughts on the Pale King by David Foster Wallace

How important is a "real" setting in fiction?

In Infinite Jest, the world is almost completely fabricated from the mind of Wallace. Sure there is the true life descriptions of Boston that is a part of the conversation. As a person who grew up outside of Boston, I personally love the description of where Don Gately heads out to the grocery store to get food for dinner.

"He likes to make a stately left onto Commonwealth and wait to get out of view of the House's bay window and then produce what he imagines is a Rebel Yell and open her up down the sertentine tree-lined boulevard of the Ave. as it slithers through bleak parts of Brighton and Allston and past Boston U. and toward the big triangular CITGO neon sign and the Back Bay."
-David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

But the locations where much of the action occurs in Infinite Jest are not "real" places. How different would Infinite Jest be if Hal Incandenza was for example a fictional elite tennis player at a true life tennis academy like Ross Academy in East Hampton, NY.  Enfield Tennis Academy is a made up place.  Enfield the town was flooded to make for the Quabbin reservoir.  The Academy is technically in the Brighton area of Boston.  But is completely fabricated.   What if Don Gately was a fictional resident at McLean Mental Hospital in Belmont, MA instead of the completely made up Ennet House? How this effect our reading of the novel?

In the Pale King, David Foster Wallace is using a true life place (Preoria, IL) and a real organization (the IRS). Of course the characters (even the fictional Dave Wallace Social Security no. 975-04-2012) are fictional. Infinite Jest was so ambitious and challenging because the reader had to piece together much about the setting, place and plot through a seemingly random nonlinear presentation of data. Even the timing of the years were ambiguous and disputable.  Time was not measured in a realistic way.  The years were held by corporate naming rights.  The tax recovery world of the Pale King is very foreign to many of us. I am sure that Wallace will also provide some quirks that make it beyond the realistic agency. However, there is a basic framework that he has to adhere to. It isn't as easy for him to bend the rules of the setting.

The fact that David Foster Wallace decided to go back in time with the Pale King instead of forward in time as in Infinite Jest is also particularly interesting and relevant. There were a lot of things that he could get away with because he was writing the story in a projected future. When Wallace is writing using true events that happened there is a certain level of accountability with the reader.

Pale King by David Foster Wallace Beginning

"Part of what kept him standing in the restive group of men awaiting authorization to enter the airport was a kind of paralysis that resulted from Sylvanshine's reflecting on the logistics of getting to the Peoria 047 REC - the issue of whether the REC sent a van for transfers or whether Sylvanshine would have to take a cab from the little airport had not been conclusively resolved - an then how to arrive and check in and where to store his three bags while he checked in and filled out his arrival and Postcode payroll and withholding forms and orientational materials then somehow get directions and proceed to the apartment that Systems had rented for him at government rates and get there in time to find some place to eat that was either in walking distance or would require getting another cab- except the telephone in the alleged apartment wasn't connected yet and he considered the prospects of being able to hail a cab from outside an apartment complex were at best iffy, and if he told the original cab he'd taken back to the apartment to wait for him, there would be difficulties because how exactly would he reassure the cabbie that he was really coming back out after dropping his bags and doing a quick spot check of the apartments condition and suitability..." (Blogger here...It keeps going...you get the point? Wallace loves long sentences! 8-) -David Foster Wallace, Pale King Page 21

I am a frequent business traveler and have only done so in the modern smart phone/cell phone era. It is hard for me to imagine what it was like to travel in the 1980s without the ability to google restaurants in the area of a specific address. If this event happened to Sylvanshine in 2011 much of this turmoil and stress could be avoided from the tarmac with your smartphone. Yet even with the modern conveniences, traveling for business is still a very lonely and somewhat stressful experience. There are still multiple tasks to accomplish at any given moment, annoying people to deal with at the airport, events that go wrong, and weird stuff that you didn't anticipate. It is easy to find yourself paralyzed like Sylvanshine.

"Above and below were a different story, but there was always something disappointing about clouds when you were inside them; they ceased to be clouds at all." -David Foster Wallace, Pale King page 14

The detail that the beginning of the Pale King has provided and the descriptions of air travel is something that I have often thought about but don’t have the skills of Wallace to put them on paper. There is something about what things appear to be from a distance or what you think they will be in your head. The reality is often not as glamorous. This theme is not new in literature. Many of my favorite books deal with this type of situation.

"The next suitable person you’re in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, “What’s wrong?” You say it in a concerned way. He’ll say, “What do you mean?” You say, “Something’s wrong. I can tell. What is it?” And he’ll look stunned and say, “How did you know?” He doesn’t realize something’s always wrong, with everybody. Often more than one thing. He doesn’t know everybody’s always going around all the time with something wrong and believing they’re exerting great willpower and control to keep other people, for whom they think nothing’s ever wrong, from seeing it." -David Foster Wallace (Pale King)

During this section I found myself thinking about Wallace and his ultimate suicide. Something was always bothering Wallace or perhaps he would not have made ultimate decision. Yet there is something deeper here. It is easy in the book or in any of his writings to look for clues towards Wallace's suicide. Yet I found myself was also thinking about my own day to day life and how I feel. There is always something troubling me. If someone were to ask me what was wrong, I could always find something to say. Like DFW mentioned in the section if some asked me this question it would make me feel like that person was being perceptive. Or feel like maybe I had inadvertently let my guard down and it was obvious that I was struggling with something. As an optimistic person, I tend to try to portray a positive demeanor. The world has a lot to offer. I have never thought about killing myself nor consider myself suffering from depression. Yet I can relate to this and it led me to wonder...

Is this feeling of trouble and need to persevere just a part of being human. Are we never completely 100% happy?