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The Pale King

3.93 of 5 stars 3.93 · rating details · 5,309 ratings · 944 reviews

The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a mom...more

ebook, 548 pages

Published April 15th 2011 by Little, Brown and Company (first published 2011)

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Jan 08, 2012 Joshua Nomen-Mutatio rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, the-good-kinda-meta

As most of the people in my corner of a corner of a corner of Goodreads know—just as well as they know about my rabid, undying affection for David Foster Wallace—I tend to use Occam's razor to slash through supernaturalistic irrationality on a pretty regular basis. Despite this reflexive skepticism, I couldn't help feeling like this book was somehow written for me while reading it. Working the graveyard shift at a residential treatment facility for "at-risk youth" (the second such facility I'd c...more

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Nov 25, 2011 Mariel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: tea dee dum

Recommended to Mariel by: boardum

When someone says something is "universal" I don't always feel like it quite applies to me, or it is some big cliche to describe just what people are used to. The big stuff like young love, birth, taking a crap, death. Sure, that's all universal and it happens to everyone (maybe not young love). Still, I don't think it's a word that I hop to and use to describe stuff like we're all gonna nod and be in the know. Yeah, I get that. Now I say but damn if The Pale King didn't feel something like this...more When someone says something is "universal" I don't always feel like it quite applies to me, or it is some big cliche to describe just what people are used to. The big stuff like young love, birth, taking a crap, death. Sure, that's all universal and it happens to everyone (maybe not young love). Still, I don't think it's a word that I hop to and use to describe stuff like we're all gonna nod and be in the know. Yeah, I get that. Now I say but damn if The Pale King didn't feel something like this "universal" to me over and over again, like my reading it and getting it made it universal. The "I didn't know other people felt this way" and "I thought I was all alone" and feeling too familiar and then pleased at the recognition. It can prickle a bit like talking to someone who calls you on your shit and manages to sound generic psychic hotline lady (I've never called one of those)/cocky therapist (maybe because people are sometimes generic) and still be right enough to make you feel uncomfortable. I appreciated this feeling about The Pale King the most (maybe something else will get me later in future musings but for now this is it). Something I like to do is try to pay attention to mannerisms of other people, especially if they are around family. If I catch myself doing something someone else does that pleases me even more. I'm really into this self awareness stuff. Bordering the line between too damned painful and looking for patterns in behavior and what is like someone else. It got me when a character finds out that other people take lots of "breaks" when studying (here is a youtube clip from the Uk series Spaced of Daisy the writer taking any break she can think of - even cleaning!- to avoid actually working. That scene is the best depiction of this I've ever seen). The "I didn't know that other people did this". Leaving your own personal area of the familiar and then venturing into what's also familiar, but surprisingly so because you didn't know you would see it there.

Chris the wastoid and his father with their controlled anxiety about not getting there on time. I've had those same exact train platform crazy paranoid fantasies right down to how the dad died. I didn't know anyone else was that crazy! When you are driving on the road are any other driver's paranoid that a woman in a house dress will step onto the road and you won't see her in time to stop? I go through a lot of what ifs. I love to trace mental trains and wonder what led to what. I love to imagine it could stop somewhere else. Chris talks about his shameful past, how his dad must have seen him with his fellow wastoid friends. The painful self awareness. The kind that can stop in time to not do anything about it and come back in time to keep you from accepting yourself enough to feel good. Chris's mental trains must go back a lot and without their '70s speed. I wish I could say I needed drugs to have those moments like Chris does. No weed. I felt that universality again reading it. Self conscious is right on. DFW knows. Two left feet in the mouth.

Meredith's obsession with not being seen how she wanted to be seen and the talking and talking circles around the truth (that old cliche that's true) and doesn't get there because she probably talks about it too much (her husband was right that she wanted to be flattered, I felt). I haaaaaaaated Meredith for a good while. I liked her a bit more when she bothered to see if Shane Drinion was listening, like it mattered what he thought. I couldn't be judgmental after that, at least I didn't wish she'd stop talking any longer. There was no way she had solved her problem from six years ago when she was a teenager and married her husband the dying guard from the psych ward. She was too happy that her beauty could make a man cry and run away. What's the cure? Could it ever be talk? It was fascinating that Drinion didn't have my kind of context when I think I "know" the type and don't want to listen to the "I need to lose weight" spiel again when said person is twenty pounds lighter than I am. Who else could this chick possibly talk to? It would be interesting to not be "you", exactly, when approaching other people's shit. It would be a different kind of a sponge to soak up all the influence and shit in the world. Or facts. I'm not good at facts. I guess I'm like the anti-Shane (other than feeling just as clueless when faced with people talking). I'd be looking and then I'd have to compare for patterns.
Probably not ever a cure, though. I don't have that much faith in the healing powers of talk. Scratching an itch, maybe.
Their ending in the notes made me laugh and feel bad at the same time. I don't like having those cynical observations that a chick is with some ugly guy to feel charitable about herself. I mentally smack myself when I think something like that. That's being an asshole).

Boredom is universal. Tedium is every day. Okay, I read this ages before I read The Pale King. I was expecting it to be different. I don't know what I was expecting but I was expecting it to be hard. Reading TPK to me felt like if you could sit down some place busy (or shut in like an IRS office?) and mind read. Like what if you didn't know what was going to be the important part and you had to process everything. Then the point turned out to be that you took in everything without the point. The boredom and the tedium wasn't what got to me. It was the spacing out and arriving at what feels like it could be important when you weren't really doing anything, like walking or tying your shoes, and you don't really know if it actually is important. I kind of just value that quiet of the thinking without trying, like it could be some kind of peace. I don't feel truly bored unless I feel like I'm trapped, though. Put me somewhere I can't leave and I'm going to be bored no matter what. What's hard is trying to make it all make sense to someone else. Trying to make something of worth out of talk. I didn't mind that it was unfinished. I liked the thinking about it parts too much.

I started reading The Pale King during one of my I can't get interested in anything mood. TPK got me out of it because I read these instances of people not really doing anything but thinking like it could go anywhere. Just don't stick me somewhere thoughtless.

Well, I felt all wise and thoughtful and shit while I was reading it, anyway.

P.s. I forgot to mention that fans of The Pale King's hated benevolent little boy will want to read City Boy by Herman Wouk. I'd also recommend the film Barton Fink. I love this kind of story.(less)

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Oct 19, 2012 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

THE PALE KING

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried — “La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”

(In this poem by John Keats La Belle Dame Sans Merci is a symbol of the Internal Revenue Service.)

*

Well, it's an appropriate day to be reviewing The Pale King. Look at today's news headlines, here in the UK. They couldn't be duller!

Plans announced to end confusion over complex domestic fuel tariffs

EU heads agree on new bank supervision rules

Ministers...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It was a strange experience reading The Pale King when set against that of Infinite Jest: having entered into it with a degree of trepidation—due to a combination of the novel's unfinished status, the advance warning I'd received about Wallace's determined efforts to capture the essence of (workplace) tedium and graft it within the story's very being, and another cyclically harrowed state of mind—it all made for a dispassionate progression. At no time, as before, did I feel completely enrapt in...more

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Nov 14, 2011 Paul marked it as assorted-rants-about-stuff · review of another edition

As you know I have a lot of difficulty with DFW. I find him difficult! Also exasperating, brilliant, funny, also thinking he’s funnier than he is, also no doubt a genius writer, all of that, and virtually impossible. A difficult case. So I came across a review of The Pale King in the Sunday Times by Theo Tait which explains the problem with DFW. As the Sunday Times is part of the Evil Murdoch Empire and is no longer free online, I thought I would excerpt the best bits as a service I am happy to...more As you know I have a lot of difficulty with DFW. I find him difficult! Also exasperating, brilliant, funny, also thinking he’s funnier than he is, also no doubt a genius writer, all of that, and virtually impossible. A difficult case. So I came across a review of The Pale King in the Sunday Times by Theo Tait which explains the problem with DFW. As the Sunday Times is part of the Evil Murdoch Empire and is no longer free online, I thought I would excerpt the best bits as a service I am happy to render to all goodreading DFW fans and fence-sitters alike:

“The novel contains a mass of technical detail and jargon about tax collection; satire about bureaucracy; digressions on work, routine and boredom; miniature treatises on ‘organisational psychology, elementary civics and tax theory’; ghost stories; minutely detailed traffic jams; and long passionate descriptions of the acountant’s vocation. All this is executed in Wallace’s unmistakable style, with ultra-long sentences that in some cases cover more than four pages; footnotes; footnotes within footnotes; brackets within brackets; and many ‘cute self-referential paradoxes’. (One of the narrators is David Foster Wallace writing his memoir of working in the IRS, which he claims is 100% true, but obviously isn’t.) Plots and characters emerge from nowhere and disappear back into it. This is partly because the novel is unfinished… but Wallace’s other novels are also, by conventional standards, unfinished.

Wallace, in short, is a fairly maddening writer. His career illustrates an intriguing paradox: that it is possible for an American novelist to have a mighty critical reputation and to sell books in large numbers – while being pretty much unreadable and indeed unread on a huge scale (I know only one person who actually claims to have finished Infinite Jest). And The Pale King seems to me like its predecessors to be fundamentally wrong-headed, a deeply unserious endeavour undertaken in a deeply serious fashion – or perhaps it is vice versa, I find it hard to tell.

Which is not to say Wallace’s reputation is undeserved. On the contrary, I would say his almost certainly a genius… [great praise for his style follows]… but whereas the style is mostly an immediate pleasure in his nonfiction, his novels come replete with thich wodges of hyper-detailed, impenetrable prose up front, like keep-out signs. They seem to be aimed primarily at literature students or other writers, rather than your average paying customer. I read The Pale King in a week when as it happened I has practically nothing to do. And after some desperate struggling early on, I began not just to enjoy it, but in places to love it… but if I had read it for fun in the course of a normal life, snatching a bleary half hour before bed or on public transport, there is no doubt at all : I would have thrown in the towel around page 50.”
(less)

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Apr 27, 2012 Greg rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

What renders a truth meaningful, worthwhile, & c. is its relevance, which in turn requires extraordinary discernment and sensitivity to context, questions of value, and overall point-otherwise we might as well all just be computers downloading raw data to one another.

In the interest of full disclosure as a 'novel' this work is not five-stars. As a collection of chapters, stories, asides and footnotes it is quite close to being five stars.

I have no idea how to review this.

I'm more than a li...more

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Aug 26, 2011 Lee rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As good as all his other stuff. No less finished-seeming than anything else he ever did. No plot, but thematic balls are always in the air and bouncing around, plus the prose is always so readable -- often easier, more mature, steadier, less trying to impress than his earlier stuff? Only had to look up two or three vocab words. Awarded the fifth star to encourage the writer to one day finish it properly -- for now, this collection of 540+ bound pages of DFW's writing, whether it's an unfinished...more As good as all his other stuff. No less finished-seeming than anything else he ever did. No plot, but thematic balls are always in the air and bouncing around, plus the prose is always so readable -- often easier, more mature, steadier, less trying to impress than his earlier stuff? Only had to look up two or three vocab words. Awarded the fifth star to encourage the writer to one day finish it properly -- for now, this collection of 540+ bound pages of DFW's writing, whether it's an unfinished novel, linked collection of stories, fragments, dialogues -- whatever you call it -- like a massive Snickers bar offered to all those famished for Mr. Wallace's particular sort of caloric content, really satisfied on micro and macro levels.

Not really an office novel. More like a longer Brief Interviews with Hideous Men than a shorter Infinite Jest. A++ sequencing job by the editor -- seems like controlled pomo chaos instead of old-fashioned mess. Conflicts and thematic dealios are explicated by the author in the final "notes and asides" section: maturity/responsibility requires ability to pay attention, especially in the face of "boredom," which is really just an inability to pay sufficient attention -- and paying attention has a moral dimension. Apparently purposefully dull passsages come studded with easter eggs -- toward the end of a long dull footnote there's a "woodpeckerishly intensive round of fellatio" --- fellatio performed by an Iranian women who seems sort of like the Indian woman in "Freedom" -- wonder if Franzen cribbed her, or if he and DFW colluded to sexualize the long liquid hair of such women, or maybe as an inside joke re: their attraction to Jhumpa Lahiri?

Minor magic realism: a character just barely levitates when he's immersed, paying serious attention to work or listening to someone. Also a pair of minor phantoms. Four major writers mentioned in the book as major writers a writer might aspire to be like are echoed throughout: Gaddis (dialogue onslaughts of JR), Perec (Life: A User's Manual -- attention to detail, structure, the name Sylvanshine echoes the name Bartlebooth), Sherwood Anderson (Winesburg, Ohio -- portraits of an ensemble cast in the midwest), Balzac (ridiculous attention to detail? I haven't read enough to have much insight). LOLs a-plenty, often at revelation of a paradox (see essay on humor in Kafka, the bit about "A Little Fable"). Several dozen pages turned down, sometimes top and bottom corners turned in -- first time I've done that since Gilead.

A systems novel -- like most of DeLillo or Kafka -- focused on individual/very much individuated lives (thanks to author's observations) inside a major faceless institution. Structurally, the book would've been loosely organized to have something to do with a yaw system -- that is, attention, responsibility, maturity are the rotor that turns the propeller that cuts through the wind of boredom, loneliness, excessive thought, and, as Shane Drinion demonstrates, enables levitation/flight (temporary transcendence). As noted early on in the book, "yaw" backwards is "way," which is the English word for "tao."

For a 1200-word version of this impression, get the tenth edition of The Lifted Brow.(less)

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Feb 23, 2012 Ian Graye rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews, read-2011, exert-yourself, reviews-5-stars, dfw

Original review: May 10, 2011

100 Words in Search of a Precis (For Those of Us Who Prefer the Short Form of Stimulation)

DFW is calling on us to become Heroes or Pale Kings.

There is something Proustian at work in “The Pale King”.

DFW isn’t so much in search of lost time or even perceptions; he is in search of a lost ability to “perceive” or to “sense” or to make things “interesting”.

In a time when there is so much boredom, DFW is offering us a way of seeing and engaging with the parts of the wor...more

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Jun 21, 2011 RandomAnthony rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Pale King is a skyscraping achievement. Separating Wallace's backstory from the novel might be impossible, but the edited text, however incomplete, astonishes. The Pale King doesn't need a sympathy vote; the book soars on its own merits.

I should also point out that, after two attempts, I never finished Infinite Jest. A couple years back I recommended IJ to my friend James because he plays tennis and I remembered something in that doorstop about a tennis camp. James is still mad. So I didn't...more The Pale King is a skyscraping achievement. Separating Wallace's backstory from the novel might be impossible, but the edited text, however incomplete, astonishes. The Pale King doesn't need a sympathy vote; the book soars on its own merits.

I should also point out that, after two attempts, I never finished Infinite Jest. A couple years back I recommended IJ to my friend James because he plays tennis and I remembered something in that doorstop about a tennis camp. James is still mad. So I didn't approach The Pale King slobbering over DFW's fiction. By this novel's end I felt like I had experienced a masterwork.

The Pale King revolves around an Internal Revenue Service center in Peoria, Illinois. IRS personnel gather and engage in the implementation of the potentially soul-killing detail inherent in tax law and policy. Others have written, of course, of paperwork's drudgery, but only Wallace, in my experience, captures the way one's mind navigates eight hours of precise, abstract analysis. Some characters develop panicked, sweat-laden self-talk and almost turn hallucinatory in their attempts to master tasks or accelerate minutes. Getting caught in traffic in a packed, airless car, for example, allows the author an opportunity for a brilliant, dizzying inner monologue about how the roads could have been better designed, the IRS's policies concerning warning stickers on windshields, and whether or not fellow passengers can sense the narrator's anxiety. But it's more than that. Way more. It's the tight-wire tension of a potentially cute girl sitting behind you while you worry that you're going to sweat through your clothes. It's nerds sharing office legends. It's meticulously cataloging every act in a quiet room. It's making little promises like “I will finish the next two tax returns before I check the time.” It's very hard to explain but penetrates every American's (if not human's) existence. It's a conversation about the type of people drawn to tax auditing. It's a man in a bar listening so intensely to a woman's story that he starts to levitate. It's trying to separate important facts when your mind processes trivia. It's believing that everyone around you knows more and feels more comfortable than you. Wallace doesn't mythologize as much as he obsessively itemizes office hours with endless sentences that mirror the way a train of thought rapid-fires into the next. So were I, for example, to recommend The Pale King to James, I would probably say “It's about working in a Peoria IRS Center but it's about boredom and hope and despair and more but I can't explain it well so you're on your own.” The Pale King is filled with wonder and a curious and powerful paradox of magical realism crossed with an uncomfortable claustrophobic reality. Wallace seems to have found a frantic and exhausting joy in close observation.

I read this book over ten days in part because I only had fourteen days with the library copy. But now that I've finished The Pale King I've needed time to readjust to normal novels, you know, the kind with plots and main characters and recognizable storylines. David Foster Wallace's The Pale King is so unique and spellbinding that it's beyond imitation. This book inhabits its own stratosphere. Five stars. No doubt.(less)

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Apr 15, 2011 oriana marked it as to-read · review of another edition

The Goodreads gods are jerks.

***

Dear Goodreads gods,

If I win the First Reads giveaway for this book, my entire life will have meaning. Every book I've ever read, and every review I've ever written, will have led me to this crowning moment. I've even created a new shelf just for The Pale King: to-read-immediately. I promise to neglect every other aspect of my life, including my dog and my boyfriend and my work, to read this when it comes.
PLEASE GIVE ME THIS BOOK PLEASE?

Sincerely yours,
oriana

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Sep 15, 2010 Krok Zero marked it as to-read · review of another edition

THIS IS ABOUT MFSO HES JERKIN OFF THINKIN ABOUT IT

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May 01, 2011 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Chris by: Scott Gates

I've spend many, many hours arguing about (mostly against) DFW's merits and place in literature since reading Infinite Jest, way back in 1999 on vacation in Spain; toting the gigantic English paperback edition around from hostel to hostel, taking it on buses and trains through Andalucia, having bought it on the insistent and frenzied recommendation of my dear friend, Scott. A challenging book, annoyingly demanding the use of two bookmarks, and endless flipping from the chapter to the endnotes. N...more I've spend many, many hours arguing about (mostly against) DFW's merits and place in literature since reading Infinite Jest, way back in 1999 on vacation in Spain; toting the gigantic English paperback edition around from hostel to hostel, taking it on buses and trains through Andalucia, having bought it on the insistent and frenzied recommendation of my dear friend, Scott. A challenging book, annoyingly demanding the use of two bookmarks, and endless flipping from the chapter to the endnotes. Not the most enjoyable book, but there were passages and ideas which showed the mark of genius.

I rebelled against the time commitment DFW selfishly demands up on his reader, and faux-academic use of footnotes and endnotes, in what I have always perceived to be an essentially adolescent attempt to appear clever and complex and to give his books a textbook quality, to make the reader feel that they are being confronted with something challenging, and that they should Pay Attention, because things are going to get complex!

Greater authors would be able to do that with standard text alone, but DFW had to get clever, had to pull tricks. Regardless of this, and the solipsism that drives writing overly long run on sentences, with clauses after clauses, a easy trick to make the reader gain speed and confuse them, make them navigate the text, confront the text as a challenging slalom of thought, endlessly coruscating ever forward with no promise or hint of resolution or conclusion, all in an attempt to appear ever more comprehensive and observant, or perhaps not more observant so much as omniscient in a way that also conveys care in making the reader aware of precisely everything that the author wishes to convey, perhaps going over details again and again, but from different angles, or perhaps slightly different phrases so as to really clue the reader into just how difficult it really is to truly convey the existence of something and not just the experience of perceiving that something and in this manner etc., etc., there are usually good moments to be had.

So, I know that DFW is widely loved, and even taught fiction, but I still feel that his authorly tricks have been done before, and I've never been impressed by these authorly tricks, which serve to obscure the fact that all novels need character, plots, insight into human personality and behavior, and an ability to convey ideas. DFW excels only at the latter, but here he truly does excel. The best I can say of DFW is that compared to the current crop of American authors, DFW was many times better that his contemporaries, in both his powers of observation and the ingenious ideas he sometimes was able to articulate.

For a full treatment of The Pale King, his final project, I defer to the NYRB...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...

This book pales compared to say, Stephen Hero

However, it was very enjoyable to read, both easier and more enjoyable than Infinite Jest, and the other DFW I have read (not all). The characters are supposed to be facing crushing boredom working at the IRS, and this book was written when DFW himself was also going off the rails and rapidly downward to, let's confront it, his own suicide - his own 'Oblivion'. However, this "book", or collection of drafts for a book, was easy and enjoyable to read, and I even recommend it over Infinite Jest. Plenty of rewarding passages with novel ideas, and the right amount of complexity that revisiting it in a few years will reap rewards to the patient and indulgent reader.

Scott, I await your comments(less)

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Scott Gates Chris, or "C", you're getting way too much love for this review.
08 lug. 09:24

Scott Gates I understand what you’re trying to say when you talk about time demands, but is it really a fault for a given work to require more time than another?...more
14 lug. 11:05

Oct 25, 2012 Nathan "N.R." Gaddis rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: after-joyce, david-foster-wallace

"'The Human Heart is a Chump': Cataloging The Pale King"; Jenn Shapland works in the Ransom Center and writes in The Millions about her experience cataloging The Pale King archival material:
http://www.themillions.com/2012/10/th...
The final paragraph:
"I don’t know what people will find in these folders or how they’ll choose to interpret this new installment to the record of Wallace’s works. What I’m certain they will discover is that within the boxes, numbered 36-41, lies not a single unfinished...more "'The Human Heart is a Chump': Cataloging The Pale King"; Jenn Shapland works in the Ransom Center and writes in The Millions about her experience cataloging The Pale King archival material:
http://www.themillions.com/2012/10/th...
The final paragraph:
"I don’t know what people will find in these folders or how they’ll choose to interpret this new installment to the record of Wallace’s works. What I’m certain they will discover is that within the boxes, numbered 36-41, lies not a single unfinished work but an infinite web of possible works. The Pale King as we know it is, in the end, just one of these, one possible iteration. There are many years of life left in these pages. I hope other readers of the archive experience something like the joy and wonder and despair and unending strangeness I’ve felt, swimming around in another person’s thoughts for a few months."

[Thanks to Friend Geoff for bringing this to my attention.]

And for folks with an archival bent, here is a blog from the Ransom Center, avec photos:
http://www.utexas.edu/opa/blogs/cultu...

______________
Ladies and Gentlemen, I implore you, this interrupted masterpiece was on its way to join other 20-years-in-the-writing novels of the late-20th/early 21-st century -- The Tunnel, JR, A Frolic etc, Women and Men, (something from Mr Vollmann, certainly), etc. What remains are a few crumbs and a clear idea that what our friend Dave had set before himself to accomplish would not be so terribly simple or easy to bring off. The crumbs that remain are delicious.

Re: The Pale King as a paean to Boredom. For better or worse the book is not boring. In the philosophical wars of the 20th century Dave was clearly on the Wittgensteinian side, but it is from the other side, from Martin Heidegger, that we find a full treatment of the experience of boredom which ought to supplement the thematic material of The Pale King. See Herr Heidegger's The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. Had Dave been familiar with this work maybe -- just maybe -- The King, Pale, may have gotten itself more fully completed? Wishful what-iffings. . . .

Damn to mourn the loss of such a fine voice, a true believer in fiction, a rare human being.(less)

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Jul 20, 2012 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: someone who's read Infinite Jest

Shelves: fiction, contemporary, postmodern, meta-metafiction, unfinished

So ~~I don't feel like I have anything substantive to say about the book and~~ (see spoiler if you dare) I don't want to add a lot of redundant information, but I can say that The Pale King really solidified the feelings I had about DFW. I have a lot more to say about him after reading this, but that's for another venue.

For starters, going into the book knowing that one of the major themes was supposed to be about life’s boringness, and for all the reviews I had read that mentioned the same, I reall...more

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Apr 24, 2011 Eric rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As usual, I'll spare you the plot line and general buzz, since I figure if you're reading this, you've read at least some of the endless hype surrounding this unfinished masterpiece.

And it would have been a masterpiece, judging from what exists of it (because it is very incomplete, make no mistake), and the author's own notes--reproduced at the end of the book--toward structure and theme. It takes on Wallace's usual themes of boredom vs. entertainment, normal vs. aberrant, individual vs. group,...more

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May 10, 2013 [P] added it · review of another edition

Shelves: abandoned

I am currently embroiled in one of my monthly book-choosing breakdowns. My book choosing is not done at random, but is a complex process subject to many factors, such as 'what did I read last?' 'what was the nationality of the author who wrote the last book I read?' 're: the last book I read, what was main thrust of the plot?' 'was the author of the last book I read male or female?' 'the last book I read: when was it written?' 're: a potential book, have I read a book by this person before?' 'if...more

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Oct 30, 2012 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1970-present, prose

The really obvious thing that everyone keeps talking about is how sad the reality of this unfinished novel is, how sad it is that DFW the man killed himself and how sad it is that we lost DFW the writer. And it's understandable, talking about that is, because we're human beings and when a writer allows us to connect so deeply with him, when he takes us on the massively emotional trip that most fans of DFW think his books ultimately are, and then is taken by his illness, we feel just as we would...more

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Dec 15, 2011 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

David Foster Wallace takes on the central problem of our times. The book can be neatly summed up in section 45, that is pages 439-440 and ends with the sentence "If you are immune to boredom there is literally nothing you can't accomplish". Pale King is therefore a perfect complement or maybe the development of the idea of infinite jest (the desperate need to be entertained), by presenting that imperative's underlying cause "rather the way the ability to breathe and pump blood underlies all thou...more David Foster Wallace takes on the central problem of our times. The book can be neatly summed up in section 45, that is pages 439-440 and ends with the sentence "If you are immune to boredom there is literally nothing you can't accomplish". Pale King is therefore a perfect complement or maybe the development of the idea of infinite jest (the desperate need to be entertained), by presenting that imperative's underlying cause "rather the way the ability to breathe and pump blood underlies all thought and action."

It's certainly an unfinished novel, there are parts that clunk, in particular some of the overwrought conversation between IRS staff, and the whole is somewhat less than the parts. I gave it five stars because I'd read it again. Though I wouldn't read it all again.

I would read these passages again: Fogle's 100-page account about why he joined the IRS is freestanding wonder and should be in William James's "Varieties of Religious Experience" (might they republish it like they did the first part of "Underworld"?); the horrible and hilarious high-school shop accident that ends with the poignant observation "...that what they'd then thought was the wide round world was a little boy's preening dream"; the sixty-page barroom tete-a-tete between "The fox" and "Mr. excitement"; the trailer crash and murder of Toni Ware's mother; all are worth rereading and close study. For humor I've already returned to the sixties experience of a certain Wash U student, and also the account of the fierce infant who "would just gaze at the auditor fiercely, with a combination of intensity and disdain, its expression rather as if it were hungry and the auditor were food but not quite the right kind."

Plus I actually enjoyed some of the info about the IRS, even if it isn't true. If we get audited, I'll check the auditor's desk name plate to see if it's Phil McPockets.

Unexpectedly, it's one of the best books on meditation that I've read even though the word itself is only mentioned once, and then only in the notes section in the back. (less)

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Jan 01, 2012 Kemper rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, modern-lit

Upon hearing that David Foster Wallace’s unfinished last novel was going to be published, my first thought was, “How do they know it wasn‘t done?” Because it’s not like Infinite Jest was a model of story resolution.

My question was answered in the introduction of The Pale King by editor Michael Pietsch that gives a concise breakdown of what Wallace left behind and how he put it together. He makes it very clear that this is not the book that Wallace was envisioning before his suicide. As Pietsch...more

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Mar 14, 2013 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Update (3/14/2013. Um, about 1:48pm) After further thoughts, discussions, and arguments (all with myself), I've upped the rating to 4. The book deserves it, and 4 stars sounds right.

Now, a too-long-to-be-an-aside aside....

I used to be a sandblaster at the company I still currently work at. That mostly consisted of me, sitting at a sandblasting cabinet, cleaning off pieces of bronze artwork, so they could be further worked on, welded together, etc. If that sounds a bit boring....good, you've cau...more Update (3/14/2013. Um, about 1:48pm) After further thoughts, discussions, and arguments (all with myself), I've upped the rating to 4. The book deserves it, and 4 stars sounds right.

Now, a too-long-to-be-an-aside aside....

I used to be a sandblaster at the company I still currently work at. That mostly consisted of me, sitting at a sandblasting cabinet, cleaning off pieces of bronze artwork, so they could be further worked on, welded together, etc. If that sounds a bit boring....good, you've caught on quick. I sat for hours a day, just cleaning artwork after artwork, and it was not a job for somebody who needed constant stimulation. Bluntly, it got pretty damn boring at times. But, I found my way around that tediousness, mostly through blasting music at obscene levels, making little games at blasting pieces in record time, and sometimes, when I needed it, going to that happy place in my head. I found that you can make some really beautiful and strange movies in your own head when needed. Anyways, there was a welder, let's call him N, and once in a while, when he had no work in his department, he would be sent to my department. Which he (and I) hated. N was loud, and brash, and as soon as he started working, the complaining began. Soon enough, I would feel a tap on my shoulder, see him standing there, and the floodgates of bitching began. "Jesus, Dave, how the ---- do you do this all day? I want to shoot myself everytime I have to go back here. What the ---- are you listening to? Dude, if I had to work here every day, I'd shoot myself. How do you sit there like that...are you even listening? Take your --------- headphones off...."

You get the idea.

Whenever N was working with me, it was horrible, not just for his continued bitching, but also because I couldn't hide the tedium with him around. All the negative aspects of the job, everything that I had tried to shove into dark corners to be able to get something done, was now under an encompassing spotlight glare, and I realized the impossibility of dealing with malaise when you have an irritated songbird on your shoulder who makes it a point to single out each dull and weary condition in front of you. When N was working next to me, what was once a quiet plodding job became horrifically sluggish and dense, and I wondered what I was doing. Which brings me to Pale King....

Because PK is about boredom, specifically the boredom of being an examiner in the IRS, and more pointedly, what kind of people would work, no, more than that, would thrive and seek out such an environment. All the workers DFW writes of are damaged in some way, be it growing up abandoned in an orphanage, raised by a line of deranged, unpredictable matriarchs, or being the type of person who decides at a young age that your goal is to touch every part of your body with your lips, and then achieve that goal up to the various body parts that would be forbidden to the cause. (like the back of the head. I know what parts you were thinking of first, and those parts were reached.) Wallace seems to present these people to say that they are the chosen, that the people who would immerse themselves in that environment are the ones who have not conceived of serious boredom, and thus dullness becomes the exciting vacation, the 8 hours a day where you can get what life never offers on the outside.

DFW does not talk about the boredom, so much as dump you into the deep end, sink or swim. Several chapters do nothing but drone on, at first glance with no real point. The points were there, but, man, you had to dig. The worst part was Wallace taking the place of existential trilling songbird, seeming to squawk at you during the thickest sections. "Man, how boring is this? I mean, holy cow, this is sluggish!" Especially during the meta-tinged author forewords, which are mindf--ks meant to present Pale King as a true story, and DFW as an actual character in said story. (For the record, pretty sure that isn't true) Every time Wallace talks to the reader in the book, he lies, in a genius sort of way. For example, the first foreword he proceeds to tell how the IRS learned to get Pro-Revenue Service legislation passed by making it the law so boring and dense that nobody would read it, and find out what the IRS was really trying to do. And he does this by making the foreword so boring and dense that you have to struggle to find the point... Mindf--ker. Those antics make the book unbelievably cerebral, and absolutely difficult to plow through.

Despite this, there are numerous sections that are worth the effort. The two longest chapters are also, not coincidentally, the best in the book. One is a conversation between an attractive woman and man who would best be described as a computer, the other is one employee, during an interview, relaying his life story and how he decided to work at the IRS. Both are excellent, as much for what they don't tell as what they do, and both also give the most character development/backstory in PK. There wasn't much of that in the book, but to be fair, that wasn't at all what DFW was going for. As I said, there are many philosophical points being made in Pale King, floating in stupor to be extracted out by thoughtful examination. PK may be the smartest fiction book I've ever read, certainly one of the hardest, but not one I can sell as extremely enjoyable. I want to read more DFW, in the future, but I'm willing to take some time in between dives towards the deep end. (less)

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Apr 14, 2011 Jimmy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

B.I. #? 04-11

'Well, I was going to suppress the urge to do it this way, but it seemed fitting. Not just in that meta-gimmicky way, but like a sort of homage. Because I genuinely do love the man and his writing, which is not the sort of sentiment that I usually feel toward most fiction writers that I admire.'
Q.
'Okay, maybe love isn't the right word. More like a relatable connection. Like listening to that Nine Inch Nails album With Teeth, and thinking about Reznor's substance abuse problem, an...more

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view all 38 comments

Jimmy Moira wrote: "Beautiful review.

It's so dark and sardonic, yet sympathetic and brilliant and basically hilarious, that no one but Wallace could've writ...more
02 nov. 14:54

Jesse yeah i can't help but think, franzen is doing all this to, a) takes shots at an author who he is clearly jealous of (like why can't I be the once-in-a...more
03 nov. 13:27

Mar 29, 2013 Ruby Tombstone rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: littry-fikshun, an-ill-wind-blows-no-minds, meta, magical-realism

How do you review an unfinished book? How do you even start to review an unfinished DFW book about magical tax agents and boredom?

I think I start by saying that the book I read is quite a different book to the book that DFW apparently wanted to write, if you believe the endnotes. The eight pages at the end tell a far more interesting story than do the 540 pages of actual text. You can't review an author's intentions, though, so all I can really do is to try to review the book that was published....more

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Aug 01, 2011 matt rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fictions-of-the-big-it, social-crit

I'm about a hundred pages in and this book is enthralling and gleamingly (not forbiddingly) complex. I love DFW profoundly, he's one of the writers I turn to for the usual reasons one turns to favorite (personal!) writers. There's insight, wit, beauty, power, depth, irony, verisimilitude, all of that stuff but also a strange sort of love. I don't mean this in an Oprah way or even 'agape' but this kind of... benevolence.

The world is an often ugly, unfair, crude and fucked-up place perhaps more...more

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Feb 26, 2013 Megha rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: something-about-the-cover

This may be an unfinished work, but it's not imperfect.

Given its theme, TPK might as well be Wallace's response to my reaction to IJ.

(More after I finish.)

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Apr 15, 2011 Brad rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There was a unique, and horrible sadness finishing this book. David Foster Wallace has been a companion via the bookshelf since 1997. I read 'Infinite Jest' when I, myself, was going through rehab at a shady inpatient facility in Chandler, AZ at age 20. I had the distinct and remarkable pleasure of following him throughout most of his literary career.

Like most of his serious fans, his mastery of the personal, perfectly honed first person became a counterpoint to my own internal and wandering mo...more There was a unique, and horrible sadness finishing this book. David Foster Wallace has been a companion via the bookshelf since 1997. I read 'Infinite Jest' when I, myself, was going through rehab at a shady inpatient facility in Chandler, AZ at age 20. I had the distinct and remarkable pleasure of following him throughout most of his literary career.

Like most of his serious fans, his mastery of the personal, perfectly honed first person became a counterpoint to my own internal and wandering monologues. Like many of DFW's fanbase, I have my own stories about serious depression, substance abuse, and the neurosis of high achievement.

So yeah, the suicide. The half-completed manuscript found on his desk. All of it resulting in this, 'The Pale King.'

It works. It's very sad. Given the context of the novel, it is almost unbearably sad.

Like most of DFW's longer output, its purposely crafted to defy (my first instinct was to say 'bigger' than) genre definitions. It is by one turn, a fictional memoir of a fictional David Foster Wallace's fictional year and a half at the IRS. By the other, it is a careful meditation on duty, on boredom, on alienation. All of it is salted with DFW's humor-- here both managing to skewer bureaucratic inertia, while remaining sympathetic to the very human causes of bureaucratic inertia.

From a craft standpoint, this felt a bit like a step backwards. 'Oblivion' seemed like DFW's high-water mark, with pretty much the entire arsenal of advanced storytelling techniques deployed masterfully. 'The Pale King' is a bit of a retreat from the cutting edge-- if anything, the style is deeply reminiscent of 'Infinite Jest.' The footnotes are back, with a vengeance.

I am being meticulously careful about spoilers. A huge chunk of the fun of Wallace's work is getting lost in the funhouse. That said, you are going to learn a lot about Federal Tax systems, procedures, and departmental structures. Your heart is going to be pulled around by a pitch-perfect cast ranging from DFW himself, as a 20-something acne-impacted college dropout, to a mysterious semi-autistic IRS reviewer who floats above his desk when absorbed completely, Zen style. There is not one, but two ghosts lurking about the Peoria, IL, IRS Examination Facility that the bulk of the story occupies.

I read the book breathlessly, in a four-day gulp. The byzantine IRS lingo is perfectly represented-- anyone with less than a CPA may have to reread some sections. I had to slow way down for some of the more complex sections.

It left me sad. It is a vastly more emotionally mature piece of work-- DFW takes off the hyperkinetic people-pleaser mask (ala Hal Incandeza) that essentially defined his narrative persona. This final DFW owns up to some family-of-origin problems that were previously only hinted at.

He is hideously hard on himself, frankly. The portrait of himself at 20 is cruel. I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist or even an armchair version of same-- but it struck me as telling that he had so little compassion for himself as a young man-- and like everyone else, all I've got is more questions.

The novel contains several scenes that I would place high amongst the finest work DFW ever did. I believe that he correctly identifies the horrible struggle of modernity as 'boredom,' a word so horrible it is almost never spoken. I do not know if rigid adherence to duty or adoption of a code is the solution; but I do know that there are many, many competing solutions that are a lot worse.

I would not recommend this as an entry-point for DFW, but it is certainly a 'must have' for fans. (less)

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Jun 04, 2011 Frederick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, wallace-david-foster

I listened to the Hachette Audiobook, read by an actor ideally suited to the task: Robert Petkoff.
I will point out that, when I got toward the end, I began comparing the U.S. hardcover edition (published by Little, Brown)to the audiobook and I discovered the texts were different. The audiobook, had entire sentences in it which I couldn't find in the print version, and name substitutions -- for example, the audio has the character's name "Shinn" in Chapter 49 instead of the name "Chris Fogle"), w...more I listened to the Hachette Audiobook, read by an actor ideally suited to the task: Robert Petkoff.
I will point out that, when I got toward the end, I began comparing the U.S. hardcover edition (published by Little, Brown)to the audiobook and I discovered the texts were different. The audiobook, had entire sentences in it which I couldn't find in the print version, and name substitutions -- for example, the audio has the character's name "Shinn" in Chapter 49 instead of the name "Chris Fogle"), which are inconsistent name-changes at that -- for example, "Chris Fogle" has another chapter earlier in the book and both the Audio and the hardcover use the name "Chris Fogle.") One chapter gives the name of its point-of-view character throughout in the hardcover while the Audiobook simply has her as "the woman.") Strange stuff, but my guess is the audiobook was recorded before THE PALE KING was given a final edit. The hardcover was published in the US on April 15th, 2011 -- Income Tax day, of course -- and my assumption is the so-called "International Edition", the ISBN for which is given on the copyright page, may be identical, in wording, to the Audiobook. I seem to see on Goodreads that readers in other parts of the world -- I'm from the US -- were posting reviews before the book was published in its author's native country. In any case, sometimes the audiobook makes things clearer and sometimes the (US) hardcover makes things clearer. The footnotes are excluded entirely from the audio, except in the cases where the footnote has an asterisk instead of a number. I found the footnotes actually give away things which are better left revealed in the narrative proper, so the lack of footnotes in the audiobook is, perhaps, not an essential detractor.
Now to the book: It is absolutely as advertised. Wallace rings in all the changes here. I think there are enough similarities to MOBY-DICK (both books being about people immersing themselves in work of a most challenging sort; both books having, early into the narrative, a curmudgeonly fellow telling those about to embark on their journey what they're in for -- Father Mapple in MOBY-DICK, the guest lecturer at DePaul in the PALE KING; both books having at least one description of a very pale being -- the one in PALE KING gets described as having a face like a whale. It's a fleeting description, but you'll find it.)
THE PALE KING is very funny in parts and also harrowing. The scary parts are like Stephen King in an extremely realistic mood. There is a touch of Hunter Thompson. Above all, this novel captures an American essence I haven't seen successfully captured in decades. It is a beautiful, monumental and rewarding book.(less)

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Apr 16, 2011 Erica added it · review of another edition

HOLY SHIT IT'S FINALLY IN MY HANDS

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Apr 08, 2011 Matthew Gallaway rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I think this novel feels very unfinished but still has plenty of breathtaking DFW moments that any of his fans will appreciate. Chapter 22 and Chapter 24 were highlights for me. One cautionary note: this book is in some ways a very bleak read, not only because of what we know about where DFW was headed, but because of (what I see) as the implications of thinking too much, which is either to 1) kill yourself (see "Good Old Neon" from OBLIVION), 2) find some bullshit religion to believe in (see Ch...more

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May 25, 2012 Nate rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, read-2012-cycle

Revised: 5/25/12
Fuck it. I'm bumping this up to five stars. I haven't been the same since I read this book and I find everything about it pervading my thoughts. One of the few books that I have thought about every day since I read it.

Original (early March):
I'm really struggling with how to rate this. Because the two biggest faults of this book are its tedium, which is intentional, and the fact that I feel I read about half of a book. It really feels incomplete. 540 pages in and I felt like I ha...more

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Dec 28, 2011 Lorraine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Very David Foster Wallace. How raw this is. The initial feeling is one of immense pity -- had he lived to finish it, the book it could've been!! As it is, the incompleteness is evident. One might've read Wallace's other famous novel, Infinite Jest -- it hung together completely, like Ulysses did. The unfinishedness of it is palpable, and in my opinion compromises any fair review the book could've had.

The first thing one should note, I guess, about the Pale King is that Wallace never really left...more Very David Foster Wallace. How raw this is. The initial feeling is one of immense pity -- had he lived to finish it, the book it could've been!! As it is, the incompleteness is evident. One might've read Wallace's other famous novel, Infinite Jest -- it hung together completely, like Ulysses did. The unfinishedness of it is palpable, and in my opinion compromises any fair review the book could've had.

The first thing one should note, I guess, about the Pale King is that Wallace never really left any instructions on how it should fit together. It was up to the poor editor and friend (alas, I cannot recall his name, a writer's critic is a thankless job) who was familiar with his work -- and him -- to put it together. The assumption here ('it was apparent...') is that it is supposed to be structured like Infinite Jest, but really, one wouldn't know.

The book is infamously about boredom. Ennui, whatever you call it (Wallace even has some sort of etymology of the word 'boredom' inserted in one of the chapters). But Wallace manages to show that -- really -- people are various. I have read reviews saying that it explores the peculiar personalities suited to the job. Perhaps. But in my opinion -- boredom is something that is very modern -- linked to capitalism, industrialisation and the rest of it. The IRS was chosen, perhaps, because it is THE extreme of boredom. But the fact is, radically different personalities are co-opted into the same routines -- with radically different results. And this IS the case in society so often nowadays -- that although jobs are different from one another, they're similar enough such that a fair portion of people end up doing what they are doing only because they need the money (in Marxist terms, alienated). You DO have the rare person who finds meaning in his/her job -- but this is more coincidence -- a happy coincidence -- of a person having a calling and being able to follow that calling through.

With regards to the rare person who enjoys the IRS, Wallace manages to give a romantic tinge to this drudge work (is he... could he be the only... a modernist could've done it. The Hunger Artist, Wallace on Kafka, go and read that essay). There IS something noble, the text seems to be saying, about valiantly and thanklessly doing routine, boring work that keeps society going -- and which no one appreciates or enjoys doing. Here the routine of life 'reveals being', so to speak. Go beyond boredom and you sort of live in the moment. It's a little Heideggerian, although my memory of that essay (was it called What is Metaphysics?) is fuzzy. I recall reading that boredom reveals being; being is covered up by being. The routine soothes the mind, allows you to feel alive precisely because all that mental babble is drowned out by the concentration needed. Work in the IRS, for those personalities, is like meditation. They go beyond thought into nothingness, which is merely the sensory appreciation of living -- perhaps I am not putting this rightly, but I think what I intend to say is somewhere along those lines. Then there are others who feel that they ARE going to do something valiant, who consciously like the work BECAUSE it is boring and mechanical, torturous -- the pleasure is of course a masochistic one -- 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' -- for those who are interested in digging up the references. Some version of the martyr complex.

Wallace is also remarkably perceptive about how one is perceived by the other, about what it means to be a human being. He understands that bodies can be traps as much as minds can. We tend to think of being bored with ideas, or just being bored as a feeling, but also that we are born into a certain situation, most times, and a very unique, odd sort of frustrated boredom ensues. I would hesitate to call it existential angst, because that seems to imply more frustration and despair. It's a sort of resignation TO the angst, an acceptance as such. The closest I can think of would be the end of Waiting for Godot, where gogo says 'I can't go on like this' and didi replies 'that's what you think'. It's the 'that's what you think' that (to my mind) separates Godot from typically 'existentialist' works -- even the notion of angst is a mask for existence -- where existing is just torturous -- and boring. Getting up to see each day is boring, but it has to be done. The book is of course more *solid*, more ostensibly political than Beckett -- and in a way less hopeful, more angry (the years inbetween make the difference) -- less funny. Wallace deals with -- how mechanisation is affecting our lives -- literally -- machines -- and how humans are becoming excess (in a way a commentary on the population problem). How didi's 'that's what you think' isn't enough, how it doesn't numb -- because you can't numb numbness.

He came very close -- I have the feeling that he was slowly, ever so slowly -- carefully circling the subject (I mean this in all ways). If he had lived, perhaps we might have had the complete view. There was something to be articulated, on the brink of articulation. I am aware from Wallace's notes that the book is supposed to have that sense of anticipation and incompleteness ANYWAY, but that is no reason to presume that the effect of the incomplete novel would mirror that of the complete novel. The tragedy is that he could've done it. He was clever enough, sensitive enough, compassionate enough. We might have had something really interesting to deal with, as it is, we catch glimpses of what could have been and mourn the loss of a great writer. I emphasise 'writer' because to me, that's what Wallace was, and was best at. I don't really agree with his views on post-structuralism, and I think some of his essays (while interesting) are conceptually dubious -- although I'll be in hot soup for saying it. But when writers write with their hearts and minds in unison, and write with conviction, they tend to have a sort of trance-like prophetic property -- their work is so much more than them, related but not equal to. It has been this way for all the great writers, and so it is for Wallace, and I regret not that we never got to KNOW what he THOUGHT, but that we never got to SEE what he WAS SEEING -- not completely.(less)

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About David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace worked surprising turns on nearly everything: novels, journalism, vacation. His life was an information hunt, collecting hows and whys. "I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today," he once said, "of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of it." He wanted to write "stuff about what it feels like to live. Instead of being a relief from what it fe...more

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Quotes from The Pale King

“The next suitable person you’re in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, “What’s wrong?” You say it in a concerned way. He’ll say, “What do you mean?” You say, “Something’s wrong. I can tell. What is it?” And he’ll look stunned and say, “How did you know?” He doesn’t realize something’s always wrong, with everybody. Often more than one thing. He doesn’t know everybody’s always going around all the time with something wrong and believing they’re exerting great willpower and control to keep other people, for whom they think nothing’s ever wrong, from seeing it.” — 129 people liked it

“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” — 81 people liked it

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