/lit/ reads The Pale King: Official Discussion Thread 4

[Anonymous No.12663434]

"The Pale King reading group will set you free, but not until it's done with you" edition.

This week we read and discuss sections 10-21

STRAWPOLL to see where everyone is at: https://www.strawpoll.me/17502887

Reading schedule (stolen from the Pale Winter group read on The Howling Fantods)
>Week 1: (2/17 - 2/23) Sections 1-9
>Week 2: (2/24 - 3/2) Sections 10-21
>Week 3: (3/3 - 3/9) Section 22
>Week 4: (3/10 - 3/16) Sections 23-27
>Week 5: (3/17 - 3/23) Sections 28-45
>Week 6: (3/24 - 3/30) Sections 46-50, Notes and Asides

Previous thread:>>>12654450

[Anonymous No.12663473]

there's gotta be some people left

[Anonymous No.12663528]

>>12663473
Who knows what posts will set off the spamfag next?

[Anonymous No.12663594]

> dfw everything I remember from the book is in the 2nd half
> dfw I'll have forgot all of that by the time you guys get there

[Anonymous No.12663672]

>>12663473
>not ron

[Anonymous No.12664007]

>>12663672
i can be ur ron tonite bb

[Anonymous No.12664631]

bump

[Anonymous No.12664865]

>>12663473
I was (thankfully) unable to participate in the past threads, but I'm here and am on section 22.

Hopefully this read along stays alive

[Anonymous No.12664943]

Is Pale King possibly a critique of modern universities and their party-lines on what counts as literary merit? Reading S10, about bureaucracy’s.

Presumably, as a well-endowed writing professor at Pomona, Wallace was aware of and watching the increasing dominance of politics in university English departments, which is itself a product of a vastly overgrown administrative sector. (This has been a conversation in academia for decades, but especially since the mid 90s.)

“One might envision a large and intricately branching system of jointed rods, pulleys, gears, and levers radiating out from a central operator such that tiny movements of that operator’s finger are transmitted through that system to become the gross kinetic changes in the rods at the periphery. It is at this periphery that the bureaucracy’s world acts upon this one.
The crucial part of the analogy is that the elaborate system’s operator is not himself uncaused. The bureaucracy is not a closed system; it is this that makes it a world instead of a thing.”


Think of how this applies to the modern university, especially English departments, and the fetishisation of a critical tradition that’s decades old, the same one Wallace fell out of love with.

[Anonymous No.12665033]

>>12664943
i had an organizations of business class that talked about this. the departmentalization of universities is pretty out of hand. you look at the webs of the titles and all the branching paths and its exactly how he describes it.
whats this "critical tradition" youre talking about though?

[Anonymous No.12665468]

the last page of S13 is too real
>tfw i know that feel

[Anonymous No.12665559]

>>12664943
It could apply to that but there's nothing specific to universities there, it's against centralized bureaucracies in general.

[Anonymous No.12665620]

>>12665559
>>12665033
Just a possible reading of many.
Thinking of Wallace finding the need for a heart in a bureaucracy (that it’ll fail if it’s left to function purely as a system, because human errors, e.g. Rome).
This is the failure of all postmodern projects: they try to rise above the human condition, and inevitably crash back down. Enlightenment, traditional values (the old school IRS thinking, pre-computer) allowed for efficiency and centralisation through power that was responsible to the larger society, rather than effectively ruling it.
This has always been an issue in politics, but since the 90s has begun to trash unconventionally-public bodies like publishing, academia and journalism. Public servants phoning it in inevitably leads to total collapse.

[Anonymous No.12665660]

>>12665620
>public servants phoning it in inevitably leads to total collapse
sounds like enron

[Anonymous No.12665947]

Fuck did everyone actually leave with Ron? It seems crazy that we go straight from threads hitting bump limit to this.

[Anonymous No.12666074]

>>12665947
maybe its just a slow monday. who knows, if we keep the thread alive till the weekend maybe people will flock back

[Anonymous No.12666362]

i heard about this a month ago & bought the book but still havent started reading.

[Anonymous No.12666555]

>>12664943
>Is Pale King possibly a critique of modern universities
No.

I think DFW meant it as a critique of supermarkets. I know for a fact he went to supermarkets.

>>12663594
Hang in there anon. I've finished up the interviews section and am mid-sweat. Enjoying the daily life focus, stuff like young couples, trailer parks, classroom angst. Feels grounded and kind.

[Anonymous No.12666590]

I asked in the last thread, but didn't get a response before it died. Sorry if this is a stupid question.
How much of the autobiographical sections about DFW is true? Some of it sounds believable, but I don't know much about his life to tell the difference between fact and fiction.