“What TV is extremely good at – and realize that this is “all it does” – is discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it” – David Foster Wallace (1962 – 2008)
I stumbled across this quote yesterday on brainy quotes , a day when DFW would have been 49 . It made me realise what a great shame it is that he couldn’t have overcome his depression and stuck around to give us more wit and wisdom like this.
A small consolation is that his unfinished final novel, ‘The Pale King‘, will be published on April 15.
It is 560 pages long so is not exactly a fragment – presumably he had his sights set on the 1000 + scale of Infinite Jest and carrying about novels like this in your head is enough to make anyone crack .
One of the book’s themes is that of overcoming the boredom of soul-destroying work in an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) centre and having spent a major chunk of my life with Inland Revenue (the closest UK equivalent of the IRS) I’m doubly intrigued to know how he tackled the topic.
Related Links:
Celebrating the Publication of The Pale King (City Arts & Lectures Inc.)
Book of a Lifetime: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (independent.co.uk)
