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Fantastic essay, man! I love that movie, but have never thought about it in the context of the "high-placed occultist aristocrat" trope. I'm always up for more of that stuff.

POSTSCRIPT: In case it's not clear, I am very much enjoying this book. For a novel that is quite literally about doing paperwork in an IRS office, it's actually very addictive. DFW may have undermined himself by being too good at his job. Thanks for reading. /🧵

In other words, I think this book gets DFW's themes across clearly, and yet -- despite, or perhaps BECAUSE it's such a well-told story -- those themes never unfurl on a meta-textual level the way he seems to want them to. And that's a frustrating experience as a reader. (11/)

This makes THE PALE KING a tricky novel to critique -- not for the reasons I think DFW wants it to be, but because it's very possible for a reader a) be bored by the boring parts, and b) "get it," AND yet c) not experience transcendent awe along with the characters. (10/)

This is a step beyond the old critique-circle defense, "If you didn't like it, you must not have got it." What DFW seems to be trying to say here is more like, "If you didn't like it, you NOT ONLY didn't get it, but I actually ACHIEVED my meta-textual objective." (9/)

But that issue aside, this meta-textual strategy falls flat as conceptual tap-dance, because it implies that -- key point here -- if the reader is intensely bored, that means that a) the book is working as intended, AND b) the reader doesn't really get it. (8/)

This may work for some readers. It's not particularly working for me -- and one reason, ironically enough, may be that DFW isn't capable of being as boring as he'd need to be for this to work. He's too observant and entertaining as a storyteller. He can't help himself. (7/)

And in this sense, THE PALE KING is (I think) intended to function as a kind of Borgesian meta-text, in which the novel is so deliberately, mind-numbingly dull that the act of reading it can induce *in the reader* the same mind-altering awakening the characters experience. (6/)

In interviews, DFW explained that he intended THE PALE KING as a kind of anti-INFINITE JEST -- i.e., where INFINITE JEST is about entertainment-as-road-to-brain-death, THE PALE KING is about dullness so extreme it transcends all binaries and prompts a kind of Zen awakening. (5/)

Juxtaposed against this is the theme of DULLNESS-- specifically, accepting that (in one character's words) "Sometimes what's important is dull. Sometimes the important things aren't works of art for your entertainment." Well said. I happen to agree. But now problems begin. (4/)

One of the book's key themes is ATTENTION -- why we pay it, what we instinctively do and don't pay it to, what happens when it wanders, and what can happen when you have no choice but to pay attention to something VERY intensely boring, like IRS paperwork. (3/)

The novel is set in the Internal Revenue Service. Specifically, it's about a set of characters (one of which is DFW himself, "nonfictionally" inserted into the text) who enter an IRS training program, and experience the many-splendored world of very intense boredom. (2/)

5. Characters "fly at" each other when they're angry. What am I supposed to picture when someone "flies at" someone else? Is it like a Dragonball Z battle?

4. "The matter before us is quite clear, to any one familiar with the basic principles of analytical geometry, as we shall now discuss for the following two pages."

3. Starting a story with a five-page treatise on the local trees and grasses, easing gradually into a discussion of the types of stone used in the construction of the houses, which might eventually circle around to a character or two, but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

2. Dialogue tags like these:

"I won't have it!" she pontificated.

"Gad!" he ejaculated.

"This Act of Congress shall be impossible to consider without the following provisions," he filibustered.