‘I’ll have a coffee please’ said the man after a disproportionate period of contemplation, and chin stroking.
‘how?’ answered the barrister in his wig and blackshirt.

‘Excuse me?’

‘How will you your coffee?’

‘In a mug, I suppose, unless you’ve progressed now beyond the necessity of containing a liquid in order to consume it? Unless it is that you can now mould a translucent pocket of air in which my dark broth shall be suspended for the duration of its want? Or perhaps it’s a specification of the type you desire? A clear articulation of how you are to combine the cow’s milk and the ground filtered and processed bean? Yes…’

His eyes dropped to the white nametag pinned beneath the blackshirts embroidered logo.
‘Yes, Gary, I sense that is what you wished to decipher. By jove! I am doing well today. “Did you get that Cassandra?” (the speech marks are to delineate the particular vocal inflection and pitch this man uses when talking to his wife)

‘I did Steven and I don’t think I was the only one’ She responds twirling her head around in a survey of each allocated seating booth to inspect the collage of disinterest and outrage etched on their faces.

‘Well? Isn’t it marvellous how your husband succeeded in deducing such a conclusion, succeeded in decoding the true intent of Gary here’s question given the meagre provisions he had to work with? This is what we once called “relying on One’s wit’s’” it was on the curriculum when I went to school- in fact moments of such analytic prowess as we just witnessed are when I’m grateful for the tireless efforts of Mrs Hatchet’s tuition!”

‘Indeed’ said Cassie

Gary yawned provocatively, stretching his mouth to its full O shape so that the rattle of his tonsils was visible as he inhaled with creased eyes.

‘Of course it go’s without saying-

‘thyngudhnes fahhthat’ he barely masked with the reflexive exhale.

‘Pardon?’

‘I do believe he said thank goodness for that’ Steven’

‘How very peculiar… Now where was I? Needless to say…’
(An inaudible combination of sibilants)

‘Wits appear to be in rather short supply in media res, one might even go as far to say that they’ve become something of a hot commodity. Gosh commodity how extraordinarily red of me, comrade!’

He wrinkled his nose until it resembled a furrowed carpet of un-lustrous fabric and with a wink positioned his fist against his head sternly. If it helps imagine this posture as remaining throughout the duration of Steven’s sojourn here.
‘Well I’ll have burnt soya milk flagellated and anesthetized by the phallic aluminium screeching steamer- poured clumsily on top of a 6 shot carcass espresso, but I’m not sure about him’

The removal of Cassie’s enthusiastic and seductive half-squint from Gary to her husband left the former felling like he was tanning on a beach as the clouds obscured the sun. Her cashmere pullover hung over her elegantly sloping shoulders to mould the sinuous curve to her buttocks in that dignified evolution of the buffalo spirit hood, and her skirt was pleated like a Japanese fan with its twin slits proudly exhibiting stretches of tanned slender thigh, which led to knees like nobs of butter and progressively intertwining golden calf’s, one of which rubbed against the other as though sharpening it. Their surface Gary now mentally traversed with his mouth, delicately grazing his interloping patted kisses towards the warm sweat fringed periphery of her skirt as Stephen responded;

“Well that sounds decidedly vulgar darling, we don’t want Gary to get any idea’s after all!” Oh I do wish you’d abandon that strange poise of anticipation, lingering behind that till as though my deliberation has hit the pause button on your control panel! Propped up in blank contemplation of me, like I have a Medusa gaze. Ha! Why am I even wasting my breath? Your hearing is probably only responsive to Coffee jargon. For you this is just an indecipherable preamble to a finely enunciated ‘Cup A Chino” just my long and dwindling way of declaring my desire for a “Latte” right?”

At this Gary moved over to unhook the twin filters and with a perfect economy of movement was on the verge of bashing the black compacted patties into the metal draw when Steven intervened.

“No! I didn’t mean I actually wanted either a’ He paused and exaggeratedly mimed the toxic phrase to the barrister ‘or a’ his mouth formed the second order.

‘I haven’t yet placed my order- look what I’m trying to achieve here is nothing less than your personal de-institutionalisation my man!’

He whispered ‘is that a real word?’ into where he approximated his wife’s ear lay beneath her raunchily untidy ‘dirty’ blonde hair. This approximation was inaccurate however and prompted Cassie to coyly tuck several aureate strands in the ravine behind her ear. This incidentally was the furthest extremity that Gary’s fantastic exploration had now reached, haven taken in every mown canyon, toned and smooth plain and radiant range since its outset from the calf, his mouth now enacting a tender nibble along the outermost ridge of her ears Pythagorean spiral.

Having received a not altogether definitive nod for feedback, Steven continued;
‘Yes your de-institutionalisation! The preliminary stage of which is almost complete, and involves deprogramming your responses, clearing out your synthetic etiquette and mirror-honed charm to leave room for authentic human reaction to blossom. Now, evidently, given how deeply your training has been ingrained into you this will be only the first stage in what will prove a long and arduous process, and I am afraid is as far as one man can proceed along the schedule of deprogramming. I have dutifully performed my role, ‘primed you’ as it were for the next stage, which will be carried forth in a few days by my associates- who are chiefly concerned with reconfiguring your emotions. Now that I’m done here, in the meantime I’ll have a, umm…’

His tongue was actually now inside her ear, probing slowly in the way the expedition had become so practiced at throughout its travels, treating this final glorious orifice as a sort of victory lap- a vindication of everything they had learnt and discovered.
‘….a skinny latte?’

‘Certainly sir, and where will you be sitting?’

‘Just over by the window on the sofa’s over…’ he gestured in the direction ‘there, you see?’

‘Fantastic, that’s £4.40 please sir.’ He handed over a £20 and Gary issued the amount of Change specified on the screen in front of him.

‘We’ll bring those over to your table when they’re ready’

‘Great thanks’

‘Wonderful thank you’ Cynthia withdrew with Steven close behind over to their green couch in the corner.
Gary looked up from the till draw,

‘Good afternoon, what can I get for you today?’

An Epitaph

Arrogantly Wasted™ on the shore:
-Spread eagled, topless, flesh stamping pebbles-
Crab-crawling to shelter from a polyphonic tide
Processing the blur and with brown paws
Unwrapping his Extraodinary Gifts.

A Limited Gift Artfully Deployed™ in a vehicle
-Poker propped, Bermuda printed, inflating pupils-
Swerves a ‘cut-here’ line wrapped in a “phew”
To pivot turn, slip-release the wheel and
Steady a droopy wink on you.

Obligatory contribution to the online DFW appraisal

The Pale King is not best describable as an 'unfinished novel'. Certainly it is true the work was left uncompleted when the Author David Foster Wallace's relapse into a particularly bad surge of the depression that had plagued him since his teens, which (relapse) was in part precipitated by his cancelling the prescribed antidepressants he felt where beginning to stifle his creativity, resulted in his committing suicide in 2008. There is also the contentions of the authors notoriously painstaking approach to his prose, his occupational neurosis, dissatisfaction with his novels to that point and evident desire to achieve a level of thematic perfection in his work which give credence to the tagline on the cover page and of course subsequently raise the debate over the ethics of publishing an artists work when said artist is no longer in a position to discuss it. If you then add to which that the non-linear transitory POV's which stitch through the novel discovered upon his desk after his death, where, as described in the prologue by the editor to whom the task of publication was assigned, without any definitive order regarding the arrangement or order of the chapters, and you are led to ask whether you should even be reading this? Whether in fact Wallace even intended for the novel to see the light of day? And if he did, whether the version you then held would be shorn of the faults that all to often draw you out from the narratives longish breadths of genius, to consider its tragic contextual background? Well ‘if’ then yes yes and yes. However, unfortunately such speculation is now fruitless and what there is to review must ultimately be considered upon its true merit rather than potential. Luckily with a writer of such poetic brilliance and imagination, assessing this novel for what it is; rather than for what It could be, stills places it amongst some of the most creative prose I’ve ever read.
It is worth mentioning that the form the book takes, is one of a whole elaborately rendered paradigmin within which the reader is at liberty to dip in and out- practically at any point without disrupting the stories cogency. Although characters reoccur TPK is by and large episodic-, which is partly explainable by DFW’s ruse that the whole plot is in fact sourced from, his own formative experience spent in a IRS tax office making it actually a pseudo-memoir. The whole confounding lexicon of the tax system, its strange GS- hierarchy, system of ‘wiggler’s’ in ‘chalk’s processing forms held in their ‘tingles’ whilst adjusting to a new policy drive to marketise the tax system and reap greater revenues which is dubbed the ‘initiative’ is a perfectly alien habitat to the average citizen. This makes it a brilliantly chosen lens for Wallace to view the themes that unite each chapter together, which concern the concepts of Tedium in extremis, Existential longing, The purpose of work, ethics of taxation, life in bureaucracy and Memory. The most prevalent of which is the issue of Boredom, and the fascinating doctrine he occasionally posits that “[It] is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.”
So we see an employee of the Regional Examing Centre where the novel is set whose death remains unnoticed for four days and whom later begins to appear on the desks of Examiners stranded at the utmost nadir of their ennui to muse philosophically upon the how’s and whys. We see how 'Toni’s' habit of acting catatonically during her traumatic upbringing, literally playing dead to avoid death, endears her to an occupation at the IRS.
Then we are introduced to the incredible, but all 360 degree human, cast of freaks who are drawn towards a drudgery almost unparalleled in other human endeavour. A series of physical and mental neurosis' are the principle common denominator ; although the tasks they are assigned- the mountains of forms that require just enough brainpower to be engaging- may be dull, the people perpetrating them are anything but. One character’s condition is a hilarious satire on the atomised ‘data’ we accumulate through modern life. He has something called ‘Random Fact Intuition” whereby streams of highly precise, entirely irrelevant and irrefutable ‘intelligence’ appear to him with no provenance at any given moment. One episode shows him trying to streamline his disorder into one that could assist him, to no avail.
Another character fictionalises Wallace’s own well-documented anxiety about public perspiration- on a level that is at once unfathomably uncomfortable yet entirely relatable, given the tone of non-sequiters and digressions which so perfectly match the quality of true thought. Each new invention offers myriad delights, by turns funny and repellent yet still revelatory about a profound aspect of the human spirit. Its hard to pick a favourite, but the child who decides heroically at the age of 7 that he intends to touch every region of his body with his lips but is subsequently confronted by the impossibility of certain areas, as a method of exploring the necessity of human relationships and the limitations of egotism as well as the frailty of human dreams is something of a tour de force.
There are times when you are so in awe of your narrators ambition- the pure effort he exhorted in pursuit of the readers enjoyment, that you revolve back once more, agog, to what it could have been where DFW to have remained stable! The hilarious deconstructions of everybody's unredeemable faults are positively Flaubertian for a writer who was so defiantly anti-realist. Wallace has to be the undisputed master in the modern age of the humour of hate, the comedy of errors, the perpetual examination of fault as a route to finding true beauty. Stumbling across his Brief Interviews With Hideous Men in an Italian bookstore, I was transfixed by the enormous determination of every story and how the collection was, as I’m certain no reviewer phrased it, ‘all killer and no filler’. Few short stories collections have scored such an imprint- indeed remarkably few aspire too- particularly the now alarming prescient and sullenly sardonic deconstruction of his own condition, and so many others, ‘the depressed person’. In which the narrative voice’s endless self-flagellation barely allows one sentance to transpire without subjecting it to an analysis about how it might have been perceived and a further recrimination about their own act of analysis and how said analysis is such a manifestation of their own endemic flaws. It perfectly places on the scales the combination of one hand guilt and on the other great irritation for the interlocutor without judging them for it that will be so familiar to those coping with the mentally ill. I have made it sound tedious but it is anything but, which Is so utterly typical of me ;)

Where you to approach the Pale King and find your self immediately wading through a strange nomenclature related to a trade you have no particular interest in or desire to learn about- bogged down in 7 page paragraphs, then trust that time spent within this excruciatingly real paradigm is more worthwhile than some of our more approachable fiction. Wallace and his friend Jonathon Franzen entered into a dilemma about the best way to preserve and sustain the novel when every facet of 'the information age' is competing for the readers attention at any one moment, how 6 hours with one viewpoint could possibly be considered worthwhile at a time when there is more ‘entertainment’ than ever before. JF chose to revert to the medium of a great story- the ripping yarn- appropriating in a way the classical form-using suspense and thrill to great effect as a way to inject intellectual novelty into popular fiction. What makes DFW the prototype, the paragon, for me was that he chose for the victim to imitate the illness. To make the novel a sprawling, disparate, post-modern web of interlacing themes- what Delillo on the backcover is quoted as calling DFW’s wish to
“be equal to the vast, babbling, spin-out sweep of contemporary culture”
No one could ask for a more fitting epitaph than this novel, to the memory of a vitally needed voice for the 21st century silenced all to soon.F and W were in coalescence on one thing though, which was on the rewards available through intense patience and dedication to a book- and the trouble we are to find if we allow the monoculture to erode these qualities. Also the absence of irony and purge of satire in an analysis of 'the man', 'the system' and 'the establishment' directs through to the new narrative tone DFW agonised to hone, and ultimately fell short of. Although it does at times take stullifying patience and concentration on the reader’s behalf The Pale King more than reimburses them in the pleasure it distributed as it stakes what are unusual claims for our leisure-saturated times; that there is dignity and nobility to be found in boredom, that life owes you nothing and that it is through your relationships with other people that you can achieve eudemonia.