>only 50 pages in >already better than the entirety

your iq dropped significantly since you read infinite jest

>>8421079

You're gonna need patience with this one pal.

Its like DFW really just hated us at this point.

i cautiously concur with OP. in 140 pages myself into The Pale King. this book seems less pretentious than IJ.
>>8421079
>the IRS examiner found dead after 4 days at work
>childhood story of altruistic-obnoxious Stecyk
good shit

>>8421079
Broom of the system and his non-fiction are his only good works.

>>8421109
>be DFW
>worldwide success with Infinite Jest, my greatest troll (so far)
>be working on new novel
>realize it's actually good and readable
>have crisis - this isn't what I wanted
>better hang myself before the book gets too good

>>8421157
Broom of the system? Really? thought that vastly inferior to TPK and IJ. his other short stories are better too. goddamn i disliked that book. the only remotely funny part was the fat guy who wanted to consume the world.

>>8421096

he's right, though.

read both a few years ago back when i was still in a DFW phase.

even unfinished 'The Pale King' is the better work.

>>8421079
What I'd love to know is how much of that can be attributed to DFW's improvement as a writer and how much to his editor in cutting out parts which would lower the overall quality and arranging an actually meritable novel.

>>8421160
This might not even be that far off from the truth, although for a different set of reasons.

Strongly disagree, so much happens in 500 pages of Infinite Jest compared to how The Pale King is only starting to establish itself in the same pagecount. Like we were already fully acquainted with both Ennet and ETA and knew quite a bit about all the characters, and at the same point in The Pale King its only just introduced the tax center and more than half of the characters we only know by name. Its commitment to being more grounded than IJ makes it more dull and less memorable, and yet still does shit like naming a character "Merrill Errol Lehrl". This would have been an awkward midstage in Dave's career because it has one foot in where he was and one foot in where he wanted to be. And it was a complete artistic backfire to intentionally write mundanely in order to simulate the boredom of the Tax office. It's got a neat novella in the midsection though, I'd recommend it just for that. But TPK is far too unfinished to be better than anything, and the finished thing wasn't looking to be super great anyway unless he was to throw some real curveballs.

>>8421928
It's true that TPK is very slow in terms of plot, but it is not written mundanely in any way or form. If anything prose is slightly better than IJ and the dialogues and monologues are much more interesting and fleshed out. This is just my perception of it.

The part with meridith and drinion is one of my favourite things DFW ever wrote

Every third fucking thread on this fucking board involves fucking DFW

Stop reading fucking trash

>>8421957
It is, and intentionally so. Every David Foster Wallace chapter, the interview tape chapter, Irrelevant Chris's chapter does it though I still like it, chapter 25. And if you've read Oblivion, heard interviews with DFW from that time you know he was trying to distance himself from postmodernism and try to get more "real", and of course boredom is an essential theme of The Pale King. It is inseparable from mundanity.
>>8421971
I liked this part too but thought it was done better with Kate Gompert.

Infinite Jest was GOAT.

Especially once you finish it and you let everything digest for a few weeks to really appreciate how GOAT it is.

File: Screen Shot 2016-03-29 at 6.11.11 PM.png (74KB, 468x304px) Image search: [Google]

74KB, 468x304px

The CIA had an elite team of experts write it for him and then implanted it into his house after his suicide, just like they've been doing with all of Pynchon's novels since his death in 1999.

>>8421157
>>8421161
read Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way in the Girl with Curious Hair collection