The Relevance of Turning a Page: Monotony and Complexity in §25 of David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King
Series
Lettre
ISBN
978-3-8376-5880-4
Type
book section
Date Issued
2021-10-15
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Pöhls, R. L. Victoria
Utudji, Mariane
Abstract (De)
David Foster Wallace once emphasized that “fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being.” This conviction becomes most palpable in §25, one of the “more opaque sections” of Wallace’s The Pale King. In both form and content, the paragraph reveals a masterly condensation of the human in a dehumanized bureaucracy. While the phrase “turns a page” is repeated about 100 times, representing the power of monotony and alienation, the reader also finds variation, rhythmic disruption and flashes of poetic insight that reveal the unassailability of human creativity and thus of human life. In addition, by experiencing formal elements that echo the narrative’s meaning, the reader is almost put into the protagonists’ position: she is obliged perplexedly to “turn pages” and work through a mass of seemingly incomprehensible linguistic data to look for the relevant information buried in there. “Sometimes what’s important is dull. Sometimes it’s work,” Wallace tells us elsewhere - his §25 not only narrates, it also demonstrates this insight.
Language
English
Keywords
David Foster Wallace
The Pale King
Relevance/Irrelevance
Boredom
Mimesis
Readers
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Book title
Powerful Prose: How Textual Features Impact Readers
Publisher
Transcript
Publisher place
Bielefeld
Start page
189
End page
205
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
263046