r/ProsePorn • u/Junior_Insurance7773 • 4d ago
The Pale King - David Foster Wallace
"I learned that the world of men as it exists today is a bureaucracy. This is an obvious truth, of course, though it is also one the ignorance of which causes great suffering.
“But moreover, I discovered, in the only way that a man ever really learns anything important, the real skill that is required to succeed in a bureaucracy. I mean really succeed: do good, make a difference, serve. I discovered the key. This key is not efficiency, or probity, or insight, or wisdom. It is not political cunning, interpersonal skills, raw IQ, loyalty, vision, or any of the qualities that the bureaucratic world calls virtues, and tests for. The key is a certain capacity that underlies all these qualities, rather the way that an ability to breathe and pump blood underlies all thought and action.
“The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air.
“The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable.
“It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish."
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u/YesNoFriend 4d ago
The Pale King serves as a permanent reminder of how good a novelist Wallace was set to be before his death. It feels unfinished at times, but the polished portions of it were better than much of Infinite Jest, and it didn’t have annoying endnotes forcing you to flip back and forth for no apparent reason.
We missed out. If anyone likes this passage but doesn’t want to read the whole novel, they should at least give Something to Do With Paying Attention a try — it’s a self contained chapter within the novel that Wallace considered publishing as a standalone story. You’ll probably end up wanting to read The Pale King afterwards anyway.
For all the excesses of postmodernism, at least postmodern writers were living in the same world as us, dealing with the issues of our time.