David Foster Wallace's The Pale King Ships...
APRIL 1, 2011 TAGS:
Michael Shaffer’s 2008 examination of the phenomenon of the “Death Bounce” began with an example:
A 12-year-old piece of fiction cracked Amazon.com’s list of top ten bestselling books last month, moving so many copies that the gargantuan retailer was briefly out of stock. The sudden popularity, at first glance, might have seemed a bit surprising. After all, the novel in question was 1,000 pages long, absurdly complicated, and distinctly short on either sex appeal or page-turning action. There was no new movie tie-in, no recent Oprah episode. The one thing that had changed for the brilliant 1996 novel Infinite Jest was this: Its author, David Foster Wallace, had committed suicide three days earlier.
Bewilderment over the rush of sales for such a difficult book has, in the years since David Foster Wallace’s suicide, bred the widely expressed opinion that his death aided his popularity more than anyone not named Michael Jackson. It also secured Wallace a longer lasting immortality. As Garth Risk Halberg writes in New York Magazine today,
What his death did, then, is not so much spawn a Cult of Wallace as wrest it from the petri dishes of the Internet and turn it viral. There he was again, suddenly, in Entertainment Weekly and on network news. Graffiti to the effect of Yeah, David Foster Wallace!!! began to bloom around the East Village. Bird Lives it wasn’t, but it seemed to confirm the transformation of DFW into totem, guru, rock star—floating signifier and secular saint.
Wallace left behind an unfinished manuscript for a novel before he died. The Pale King is available for purchase online. This release has become something of a media event
An event that seems to remind readers and critics that the cause behind DFW’s posthumous popularity was the currency, vibrancy and vitality of his prose as much as it was a phenomenon of his death.
The book is slated to hit stores on April 15, tax day. The Pale King's protagonist is an existentially bored IRS employee. Death and Taxes, indeed.
Oblivion
By Alex Rose
The Brooklyn Literary Community Remembers David Foster Wallace.
A 12-year-old piece of fiction cracked Amazon.com’s list of top ten bestselling books last month, moving so many copies that the gargantuan retailer was briefly out of stock. The sudden popularity, at first glance, might have seemed a bit surprising. After all, the novel in question was 1,000 pages long, absurdly complicated, and distinctly short on either sex appeal or page-turning action. There was no new movie tie-in, no recent Oprah episode. The one thing that had changed for the brilliant 1996 novel Infinite Jest was this: Its author, David Foster Wallace, had committed suicide three days earlier.
Bewilderment over the rush of sales for such a difficult book has, in the years since David Foster Wallace’s suicide, bred the widely expressed opinion that his death aided his popularity more than anyone not named Michael Jackson. It also secured Wallace a longer lasting immortality. As Garth Risk Halberg writes in New York Magazine today,What his death did, then, is not so much spawn a Cult of Wallace as wrest it from the petri dishes of the Internet and turn it viral. There he was again, suddenly, in Entertainment Weekly and on network news. Graffiti to the effect of Yeah, David Foster Wallace!!! began to bloom around the East Village. Bird Lives it wasn’t, but it seemed to confirm the transformation of DFW into totem, guru, rock star—floating signifier and secular saint.
Wallace left behind an unfinished manuscript for a novel before he died. The Pale King is available for purchase online. This release has become something of a media event
An event that seems to remind readers and critics that the cause behind DFW’s posthumous popularity was the currency, vibrancy and vitality of his prose as much as it was a phenomenon of his death.
The book is slated to hit stores on April 15, tax day. The Pale King's protagonist is an existentially bored IRS employee. Death and Taxes, indeed.
OblivionBy Alex Rose
The Brooklyn Literary Community Remembers David Foster Wallace.
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