This is why I work in publishing

Full Disclosure: What follows is a highly subjective narrative based on my personal experience of being a 100% fan[1] of the above pictured writer who was known for his favouring of incredibly long sentences and footnotes but more importantly was inhabited by a crushing brilliance and infallible genius that allowed him to describe exactly what it feels like to be a live, thinking homosapien in this crazy modern world we call home.

Yesterday, at Hamish Hamilton, we announced a major new acquisition that is of particular significance to me; the posthumous masterpiece, the ‘Long Thing’ my literary hero had been working on since Infinite Jest, a new novel from David Foster Wallace, The Pale King.  When The New Yorker ran an extract from the novel, Wiggle Room, I couldn’t believe it. Still raw from the tragic loss of his death, suicide at a mere 46 after a lifetime of severe depression, I couldn’t believe that there was more. And not just an unpublished story, or an essay, but a novel.  D.T. Max explains how this all came about in his brilliant and devastating essay ‘The Unfinished’ (also in The New Yorker):

'In his final hours, he had tidied up the manuscript so that his wife could find it. Below it, around it, inside his two computers, on old floppy disks in his drawers were hundreds of other pages—drafts, character sketches, notes to himself, fragments that had evaded his attempt to integrate them into the novel. This was his effort to show the world what it was to be “a f***ing human being.” He had not completed it to his satisfaction. This was not an ending anyone would have wanted for him, but it was the ending he chose.'

My love affair with David Foster Wallace’s writing began after a combination of Janet Street Porter’s bile (‘I thought it was some kind of evil practical joke’) and Paul Morley’s enthusiasm (‘the way of using words in all sorts of extremely gymnastic ways is continually a sexual and intellectual thrill’) during a discussion of Oblivion on Newsnight Review compelled me to buy a copy. I had never read anything like it, despite being in a pretty intense DeLillo/Pynchon/Auster place at the time. The stories just blew me away, especially Good Old Neon, which I still maintain to this day (as my colleagues here in the office can attest to) is one of, if not, the[2] finest pieces of short fiction ever written. After Oblivion I quickly, or as quickly as one can with DFW, devoured the rest of his books and discovered a writer completely without peer[3].

In his fiction he explored hideous men, anxiety, obsession and addiction; in his non-fiction he tackled everything from luxury cruise liners to Presidential campaigns, state fairs to dictionaries of American Usage. Oh, and tennis, always tennis. Through it all, his insane genius is evident and all is peppered with gut-wrenching hilarity and an epiphanic sadness that just plain nails the human condition. With The Pale King (and I’ve been lucky enough to read 120 pages of it so far) he describes the lives of the employees at an Internal Revenue Service centre, and its central character is a David Wallace[4].  It is about boredom (which was apparently coined before the word ‘interesting’),

‘About  negotiating boredom as one would a terrain, its levels and forests and endless wastes. Learned about it extensively, exquisitely, in my interrupted year. And now ever since that time have noticed, at work and in recreation and time with friends and even the intimacies of family life, that living people do not speak much of the dull. Of those parts of life that are and must be dull. Why this silence? Maybe it’s because the subject is, in and of itself, dull … There may, though, I opine, be more to it … as in vastly more, right here before us all, hidden by virtue of its size’.

His aim was to be emotionally engaging and to write about boredom while being entertaining and to show the world what it was to be a human being. 

In all his work he has shown me this. Which is why he is my favourite, why I love his writing, why I was devastated by his death and why I am unbelievably honoured, excited and privileged to be able to work on this book and to bring this peerless chronicler of modernity to the audience his singular genius deserves.

Matt Clacher

Literary Marketing Executive

@threemarketeers

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[1] I would go out on a limb here and say, w/r/t David Foster Wallace, that he is in fact my favourite writer of all time and has, in Infinite Jest, written the most accomplished and enjoyable novel I have ever read.

[2] An honourable mention should also go Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener

[3] As HH’s own Zadie Smith says, ‘he’s so modern he’s in a different time-space continuum from the rest of us.’

[4] Although as his author’s forward claims, w/r/t him (the real David Wallace) being the main character, that this isn’t a cute, look-mum-no-hands “metafictional titty pincher”.

Comments

[John Self]

"It is about boredom (which was apparently coined before the word ‘interesting’)"

The first recorded use of 'boredom' was by Charles Dickens in Bleak House, in 1852. Don't know when 'interesting' was coined, but I'd be a bit surprised if it was later than that.

Also, re: footnote 4, sorry but the use of "forward" instead of "foreword" is one of my personal bugbears. Please don't say it has spread to the good house of Penguin!

[John Self]

Some Friday-afternoon investigation later: "interesting" was first recorded in 1711 but with the meaning of 'important' - the current meaning was first noted around 1768.

[Matt]

Nice investigating! It is referenced in the Wiggle Room extract. It was 'bore' not 'boredom'.

'Note, too, that “interesting” first appears just two years after “bore.” 1768. Mark this, two years after. Can this be so?'

Apologies for my mistake. 'For(e)wa(o)rd' is also one of mine, mistakes that is.

[shelly]

Hi,
This site is telling about the boredom it is a very interesting thing and everybody should know about the boredom actually the 'boredom' was used by Charles Dickens in Bleak House, in 1852. Don't know when 'interesting' was coined, but I'd be a bit surprised if it was later than that.
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shelly
sapience