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17715748 No.17715748 [Reply] [Original]

What do you think he still had left to write?

>> No.17715754

it hurts too much, dfwbros.

>> No.17715770

>>17715754
hold me bro :( i hate to think of what could have been, fragments of TPK are SOOOOO good

>> No.17715777

>>17715748
Not much, mostly just editing, but it does not need a great deal of that. I think editing would have made it serve his goals better, being a work for those that loved IJ but completely missed the point and got obsessed about plot. Personally I think we ultimately benefit from it being unedited, we got a much more complex and purely DFW work than it would have been, we get to see how he wrote and thought. While IJ will always be my favorite of his, TPK is the better work in every way.

>> No.17716304

Author here, AMA. Lets try and keep it on the topic of The Pale King.

>> No.17716311

>>17716304
are you in heaven or hell

>> No.17716328

nothing. its finished

>> No.17716336

>>17716311
Neither. Not dead. The report of my suicide was an error, it seemed pointless to try and go against the US media and the idea of a new start was appealing. So I decided to swim with the current for a change, moved to the high deserts of Nevada and started training seeing eye dogs.

>> No.17716420

>>17716336
when are you going to release your next novel sir mr wallace sir

>> No.17716433

>>17716420
Sometime after people give up on toothbrush and DMZ theories.

>> No.17716485

I think the part of the book where the former degenerate describes how he came to work for the IRS communicates basically everything the rest of the novel communicates in miniature - I'll admit that I found a good deal of the rest of the novel to be pretty aimless and sometimes indulgent, but that particular section is a masterful, and even cleverly drags in places to make its point. It very nearly got through to me when I was myself a sort of aimless degenerate, though, of course, there is nothing you can do to help a degenerate until he changes himself.

My sense was that the book was essentially fragmented (on purpose) - what themes do you think are implied by the rest of the book that do not appear in it or that he might have expanded on (and how)?

>> No.17716520

>>17716336
that doesn't seem very sincere

>> No.17716546

>>17716485
>basically everything the rest of the novel communicates in miniature
That is the entire novel, it is structured to reflect legal/tax documents, endless recursion giving more detail, the wastoid novella is the most blatant example of this. The first chapter essentially is a summery of the entire novel in two paragraphs, the rest restates and elaborates, becomes more concise but at the same time more obscured, you loose perspective as you zoom in to see the detail, it takes study to put it all together.

>>17716520
Plainly admitting the truth is insincere?

>> No.17716555

>>17716433
What theories are there around the toothbrush? Isn't it obvious (though not explicitly laid out) that Gately mails a picture of the DA's toothbrushes up his/his accomplices' asses a week (or however long) after the burglary?

>> No.17716567

>>17716555
Hal's toothbrush, you dope

>> No.17716707

>>17716567
>>17716567
Ah, yes - I don't think the DMZ thing is really absolutely resolved in the novel, but the outline is essentially there. I remember an off-handed reference to the importance of not leaving one's toothbrush unattended at the school, but there is never any suggestion that being drugged via your toothbrush is something that one might expect to happen, especially considering the references to more juvenile pranks. Also, Pemulis does not, I believe, give any indication that he would drug someone unexpectedly, since he is selling drugs (rather than using them socially) and is trying to avoid detection by the authorities and would not want to draw attention to his activities by pulling a drugging prank that might result in the sort of outburst or mental break that would draw attention to him.

My memory of things was that the most likely suggestion was that the Wraith must have done it, and that regardless of how it happened (or if it can even be resolved), it's not really important anyway, since everything relating to Hal, his father, the mold, and the DMZ is about their relationship and failures to communicate, rather than the mechanics of exactly how it happens.

Previously Hal could communicate but not feel (q.v. the extreme vocabulary but the internal deadness) and when the DMZ hits him, he can feel but no longer communicate. The Wraith (his father) fulfills his goal of understanding his son, because now his access to Hal's thoughts has content, as opposed to before, when those thoughts would have had no real emotional meaning. His father was shown to be willing to go to extreme measures for this communcation (like pretending to be a conversationalist) and has achieved his goal despite now having shattered his son's mind.

Am I far off here? But I'll admit that I could never quite understand why James was so obsessed with this sort of communication with his son that he was willing to potentially fatal (at least to his son's mind) - or is the point that he was so single-minded (and selfish) that he failed to recognize the severity of the potential consequences? I have never quite been able to figure this all out and would genuinely appreciate your input.

>> No.17716726

>>17716707
>Also, Pemulis does not, I believe, give any indication that he would drug someone unexpectedly
He drugs his tennis opponent.

>> No.17716727

>>17716707
Himself's ghost took the house mold, the same mold that made Hal autistic in the first place, and put it on Hal's toothbrush to cure his autism. This is the most basic IJ theory that it's impossible to lurk in a thread without learning about, how are you unfamiliar with it?

>> No.17716774

>>17716555
Lol I forgot about this

>> No.17716779

>>17716707
Not leaving your toothbrush unattended is drawing a parallel between ETA/Ennet and Hal/Gately, they both have to worry about such things. The Hal/Gately parallel is a very part of understanding the novel.

You are distracted by the DMZ. Remember what the Wraith says and the Young Jim chapters. The Wraith (Himself) fears that his son (Hal) is turning into a figurant, someone who is not heard, does not speak, just fulfills his role as expected, just like he (the Wraith) was as a child. Hal does not get dosed with DMZ, he makes a choice, he chooses pot and to cease speaking entirely, he becomes the figurant.

>> No.17716782

>>17716707
>Pemulis does not, I believe, give any indication that he would drug someone unexpectedly
I think you're right, but doesn't the peemster do this twice? To an opponent at a game and to John Wayne. Actually I forget how JW was drugged or if he even was.

>> No.17716794

>>17716782
JW was most likely accidentally dosed, Pemulis has no reason to dose him. Remember where Troeltsch hides his Tenuate and what medicine JW had a reaction too.

>> No.17716804

>>17716794
OH yeah you're right. It was an accidental dose. Thanks for jogging my memory.

>> No.17716843

>>17716726
>>17716782
I read it in 2014 so my memory of everything is not clear, but, yes, Pemulis does drug his opponents, but that's to advance his interests. Drugging Hal with a powerful hallucinogen when he could have sold it to him (or someone else) does nothing for him, because he doesn't get the money for something that Hal would have (potentially) consumed anyway and he would potentially be bringing heat onto his illegal drug operation. I'm not saying that Pemulis didn't do it, but I think there's far more reason to suggest that the Wraith did it.

>>17716779
re:
>he makes a choice, he chooses pot and to cease speaking entirely, he becomes the figurant
Hal does not choose to stop speaking - when he is in the hospital next to Gately the narration says that he is desperately trying to communicate something or other about the digging up of James's head but is not capable of speaking. The DMZ is clearly what triggers the muteness, but we see the events leading up to his come-up, and he does not take the drug voluntarily, and even if he did, he is not aware of what the consequences of taking it would be, and does not later choose to not speak -- he is stripped of that ability.

>>17716727
Maybe I'm not clear on the exact details, but I that's what I'm saying: the Wraith doses him with DMZ, was my reading. What I don't get is why the Wraith would do this - is there a reason to believe that he is unaware of the consequences or does he think that Hal being able to feel is so important that it makes sense to do something this extreme? I am not aware of the textual evidence that suggests the extent of his knowledge of the consequences or of why he thinks his goal of communication with Hal is so important. I detected that he was not only concerned about Hal being able to communicate generally, but specifically with his father (q.v. the conversationalist scene), and his desire to communicate with his son seems to go beyond what fits within the bounds of normal fatherly concern/interest.

>> No.17716871

>>17716843
>Hal does not choose to stop speaking - when he is in the hospital next to Gately
When does that happen? You mean Year of Glad when they haul him off? Gately spent a year in the hospital? Hal does not choose to cease speaking, he chooses pot, ceasing speaking is part of that, this is what the whole inner monologue/VR5 part that is most of Hals part in the last third of the novel is about. You should probably reread it, atleast reread the Young Jim and Wraith section.

>> No.17716944

>>17716871
>he chooses pot, ceasing speaking is part of that
I feel like you have reason to believe this but it still sounds silly to me. I need some of that 'get hospitalized cause whenever you try to speak you start convulsing and howling' weed

>> No.17716975

>>17716944
Yeah, I don't know what this guy's talking about - I think he may have misunderstood a few things, because Gately is definitely in the hospital at the same time as Hal, and Hal is definitely rendered incapable of speaking by the DMZ. Just after it starts to hit him, he is talking with I think Pemulis and has no control over his tone and can't communicate his (new) emotions, which eventually becomes pathological, to the point where he is hospitalized, etc etc.

The weed predates all of the real funny business with the DMZ - in fact, I don't think there is any reason to believe that he smokes weed at any time after he becomes mute.

>> No.17717000

>>17716944
Well, just answer my question then.

>>17716975
When is it shown he is in the hospital with Gately? The other anon can not answer this and nor can you.

>like say for example if one of 'Cheers!' 's bar's figurants suddenly decided he couldn't take it any more and stood up and started shouting and gesturing around wildly in a bid for attention and nonperipheral status on the show, Gately realizes, all that would happen is that one of the audibilizing 'name' stars of the show would bolt over from stage-center and apply restraints or the Heineken Maneuver or CPR, figuring the silent gesturing figurant was choking on a beer-nut or something, and that then the whole rest of that episode of 'Cheers!' would be about jokes about the name star's life-saving heroics, or else his fuck-up in applying the Heineken Maneuver to somebody who wasn't choking on a nut. No way for a figurant to win.

Pretty much exactly what happens in the first chapter.

>> No.17717005

>>17716336
makes sense.

>> No.17717077

>>17717000

Ok - sorry, I was wrong. I consulted some outside sources and seem to have gotten the wires crossed of him being in the hospital with Hal and what actually happened which is that he is visited by the wraith and has a vision of Hal (it seems). That said, I stand by the idea that Hal does not merely choose not to speak but was rendered mute by the DMZ.

Regardless, I still don't totally understand the Wraith/James's compulsion to do such great damage to Hal merely to make him more "human" - I can't figure out if it's just a function of James's narcissism or if he really believes that basically being rendered mentally ill and (at least ostensibly, to to others) mentally handicapped is a fair trade for having depth of feeling... Most parents want their children to be comfortable and happy, not emotionally complex, even as they want to be emotionally complex and are willing to suffer for it. It's one of the paradoxes of parenthood, which I've observed many times.

>> No.17717096

>>17717000
I am the other anon. I think the person your arguing with may be a little confused about the head digging up scene as am I. But finding pages to cite in this book is hell lol. Hal recalls the scene when he's on the stretcher in the year of glad on pages 16 and 17 of the 10th anniversary edition of the book. I'm trying to find where gately mentions it but I'm struggling

>> No.17717109

>>17717077
>I stand by the idea that Hal does not merely choose not to speak but was rendered mute by the DMZ
As do I. I dont see any other explanation

>> No.17717196

>>17717096
You are getting there. Now tell me where there is even the most tiny suggestion that the wraith knows about DMZ. The wraith explicitly tells Gately that he fears his son is experimenting with drugs, why would the wraith give Hal what he fears Hal is using? The wraith want to help Hal when he was still alive and not a wraith, but

>The wraith pushes his glasses up in the vaguely snivelling way of a kid that's just got slapped around on the playground and says he personally spent the vast bulk of his own former animate life as pretty much a figurant, furniture at the periphery of the very eyes closest to him, it turned out, and that it's one heck of a crummy way to try to live.

We know Hal had started to cease speaking long ago, Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad and the professional conversationalist when Hal is 11.

>Is Himself still having this hallucination I never speak? Is that why he put the Moms up to having me bike up here?

We get a few other examples of Hal not speaking throughout the novel and Hal's facial discontinuities start during the Interdependence Day Eschaton when he indulges in public pot consumption despite not wanting/intending too. We get many other examples of his facial issues and communications issues in the chapters to come, slowly building as he recedes into himself and his role in the novel becomes largely his inner monologue.

Seriously, review the Young Jim and Wraith Chapters.

>> No.17717204

>>17717196
Ah dont be rude. Give me page numbers for those excerpts so I can read around them a bit. And dont just tell me to reread, because if I wanted to re read rn I wouldn't be engaging in a dialogue with you.

>> No.17717211

>>17717204
I am just searching the ebook so I can copy and paste. The Young Jim and Wraith stuff is under 100 pages total, probably closer to 50 pages, the online index will give you page numbers.

>> No.17717238

>>17717211
Thanks. What program are you using fro the ebook? I havent used a kindle/calibre in a long while so I could have been just being a little simple, but I remember being frustrated by neither having a 'search in text' feature

>> No.17717259

>>17717238
My ebook is the PDF so I just use a normal PDF reader. You can just convert the ebook to text, any word processor can search and many have quite fancy searches.

Generally I just use the online index, it is better than the search function and ebook most of the time, just use the ebook when I want to copy and paste.
http://russillosm.com/ijndx.html

>> No.17717263

>>17717259
Oh I've never seen the index before. This is sort of incredible ty.

>> No.17717296

>>17717263
It misses a fair amount, but with a little creative thinking you can find most everything and it is almost always quicker than searching the ebook for a word that occurs many times in the book. I would have copy and pasted more if searching was more effective.