The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel

by David Foster Wallace

  Anyhow, I was sitting there trying to spin the ball on my finger and watching the soap opera, which was also heavily loaded with commercials—especially in the second half, which soap operas tend to load with more commercials, as they figure that you’re already sucked in and mesmerized and will sit still for more ads—and at the end of every commercial break, the show’s trademark shot of planet earth as seen from space, turning, would appear, and the CBS daytime network announcer’s voice would say, ‘You’re watching As the World Turns,’ which he seemed, on this particular day, to say more and more pointedly each time—‘ You’re watching As the World Turns,’ until the tone began to seem almost incredulous—‘ You’re watching As the World Turns’—until I was suddenly struck by the bare reality of the statement. I don’t mean any sort of humanities-type ironic metaphor, but the literal thing he was saying, the simple surface level. I don’t know how many times I’d heard this that year while sitting around watching As the World Turns, but I suddenly realized that the announcer was actually saying over and over what I was literally doing. Not only this, but I also realized that I had been told this fact countless times—as I said, the announcer’s statement followed every commercial break after each segment of the show—without ever being even slightly aware of the literal reality of what I was doing. I was not Obetrolling at this moment of awareness, I should add. This was different. It was as if the CBS announcer were speaking directly to me, shaking my shoulder or leg as though trying to arouse someone from sleep—‘ You’re watching As the World Turns.’ It’s hard to explain. It was not even the obvious double entendre that struck me. This was more literal, which somehow had made it harder to see. All of this hit me, sitting there. It could not have felt more concrete if the announcer had actually said, ‘You are sitting on an old yellow dorm couch, spinning a black-and-white soccer ball, and watching As the World Turns, without ever even acknowledging to yourself this is what you are doing.’ This is what struck me. It was beyond being feckless or a wastoid—it’s like I wasn’t even there. The truth is I was not even aware of the obvious double entendre of ‘You’re watching As the World Turns’ until three days later—the show’s almost terrifying pun about the passive waste of time of sitting there watching something whose reception through the hanger didn’t even come in very well, while all the while real things in the world were going on and people with direction and initiative were taking care of business in a brisk, no-nonsense way—meaning not until Thursday morning, when this secondary meaning suddenly struck me in the middle of taking a shower before getting dressed and hurrying to what I intended—consciously, at any rate—to be the final-exam review in American Political Thought. Which may have been one reason why I was so preoccupied and took the wrong building’s entrance, I suppose. At the time, though, on Monday afternoon, all that hit home with me was the reiteration of the simple fact of what I was doing, which was, of course, nothing, just slumped there like something without any bones, uninvolved even in the surface reality of watching Victor deny his paternity to Jeanette (even though Jeanette’s son has the same extremely rare genetic blood disorder that’s kept putting Victor in the hospital throughout much of the semester. Victor may in some sense have actually ‘believed’ his own denials, I remember thinking, as he essentially seemed like that kind of person) between my knees.

  But nor is it as though I consciously reflected on all of this at the time. At the time, I was aware only of the concrete impact of the announcer’s statement, and the dawning realization that all of the directionless drifting and laziness and being a ‘wastoid’ which so many of us in that era pretended to have raised to a nihilistic art form, and believed was cool and funny (I too had thought it was cool, or at least I believed I thought so—there had seemed to be something almost romantic about flagrant waste and drifting, which Jimmy Carter was ridiculed for calling ‘malaise’ and telling the nation to snap out of it) was, in reality, not funny, not one bit funny, but rather frightening, in fact, or sad, or something else—something I could not name because it has no name. I knew, sitting there, that I might be a real nihilist, that it wasn’t always just a hip pose. That I drifted and quit because nothing meant anything, no one choice was really better. That I was, in a way, too free, or that this kind of freedom wasn’t actually real—I was free to choose ‘whatever’ because it didn’t really matter. But that this, too, was because of something I chose—I had somehow chosen to have nothing matter. It all felt much less abstract than it sounds to try to explain it. All this was happening while I was just sitting there, spinning the ball. The point was that, through making this choice, I didn’t matter, either. I didn’t stand for anything. If I wanted to matter—even just to myself—I would have to be less free, by deciding to choose in some kind of definite way. Even if it was nothing more than an act of will. All of these awarenesses were very rapid and indistinct, and the realizations about choosing and mattering were as far as I got—I was also still trying to watch As the World Turns, which tended to get steadily more dramatic and compelling as it progressed towards the hour’s end, as they always wanted to make you remember to tune in again the next day. But the point was that I realized, on some level, that whatever a potentially ‘lost soul’ was, I was one—and it wasn’t cool or funny. And, as mentioned, it was only a few days later that I mistakenly ended up across the transom in the final-class session of Advanced Tax—which was, I should stress, a subject which at that time I had zero interest in, I believed. Like most people outside the industry, I imagined tax accountancy to be the province of fussy little men with thick glasses and elaborate stamp collections, more or less the opposite of hip or cool—and the experience of hearing the CBS announcer spell out surface reality over and over, of suddenly really being aware of hearing him, and of seeing the little screen between my knees, beneath the spinning ball on my finger’s point was part of what put me in a position, I think, whether mistakenly or not, to hear something that changed my direction.

  I remember that the third-floor’s hallway’s bell had rung at the end of the scheduled time for Advanced Tax that day without any of the students doing that end-of-class thing in humanities classes of fidgeting around to gather their materials together or leaning over their desks to retrieve their bags and briefcases from the floor, even as the substitute turned off the overhead projector and raised the A/V screen with a smart snap of his left hand, replacing the handkerchief in his suit coat’s pocket. They all remained quiet and attentive. As the room’s overhead lights came back on, I remember glancing and seeing that the older, mustachioed student beside me’s class notes were almost unbelievably neat and well-organized, with Roman numerals for the lecture’s main points and lowercase letters, inset numbers, and double indents for subheadings and corollaries. His handwriting itself looked almost automated, it was that good. This was despite the fact that they were essentially written in the dark. Several digital watches beeped the hour in sync. Just like its mirror opposite across the transom, Garnier 311’s floor was tiled in an institutional tan-and-brown pattern that was either checkerboard or interlocking diamonds, depending on one’s angle or perspective. All of this I remember very clearly.

  Though it would be over a year before I understood them, here are just a few of the substitute’s review lecture’s main areas, as denumerated in the older business student’s notes:

  Imputed Income → Haig-Simons Formula

  Constructive Receipt

  Limited Partnerships, Passive Losses

  Amortization and Capitalization → 1976 TRA §266

  Depreciation → Class Life System

  Cash Method v. Accrual Method → Implications for AGI

  Inter vivos Gifts and 76 TRA

  Straddle Techniques

  4 Criteria for Nontaxable Exchange

  Client Tax Planning Strategy (‘Tailoring the Transaction’) v. IRS Exams Strategy (‘Collapsing the Transaction’)

  It was, as mentioned, the final regular class day of the term. The end of t
he final regular class, in the humanities courses I was used to taking, was usually the moment for the younger professor to try to make some kind of hip, self-mocking summation—‘ Mr. Gorton, would you briefly summarize what we’ve learned over the past sixteen weeks, please?’—as well as instructions about the logistics of the final exam or paper, and final grades, and perhaps wishes for a good holiday recess (it was two weeks before Christmas 1978). In Advanced Tax, though, when the substitute turned from raising the screen, he gave none of the bodily signals of completion or transition to final instructions or summary. He stood very still—noticeably stiller than most people stand when they stand still. Thus far, he had spoken 8,206 words, counting numeric terms and operators. The older males and Asians all still sat there, and it seemed that this instructor was able to make eye contact with all forty-eight of us at once. I was aware that part of this substitute’s vibe of dry, aloof, effortless authority was due to the way the class’s upperclassmen all paid such attention to his every word and gesture. It was obvious that they respected this substitute, and that it was a respect that he didn’t have to return, or feign returning, in order to accept. He was not anxious to ‘connect’ or be liked. But nor was he hostile or patronizing. What he seemed to be was ‘indifferent’—not in a meaningless, drifting, nihilistic way, but rather in a secure, self-confident way. It’s hard to describe, although I remember the awareness of it very clearly. The word that kept arising in my mind as he looked at us and we all watched and waited—although all of this took place very quickly—was credibility, as in the phrase ‘credibility gap’ from the Watergate scandal, which had essentially been going on while I was at Lindenhurst. The sounds of other accounting, economics, and business administration classes emptying into the hallway were ignored. Instead of gathering together his materials, the substitute—who, as mentioned, I thought at the time was a Jesuit father in ‘mufti’—had put his hands behind his back and paused, looking at us. The whites of his eyes were extremely white, the way usually only a dark complexion can make eyes’ whites look. I’ve forgotten the irises’ color. His complexion, though, was that of someone who had rarely been out in the sun. He seemed at home in thrifty, institutional fluorescent light. His bow tie was perfectly straight and flush even though it was the hand-tied kind, not a clip-on.

  He said, ‘You will want something of a summation, then. An hortation.’ (It is not impossible that I misheard him and what he actually said was ‘exhortation.’) He looked quickly at his watch, making the same right-angled movement. ‘All right,’ he said. A small smile played around his mouth as he said ‘All right,’ but it was clear that he wasn’t joking or trying to slightly undercut what he was about to say, the way so many humanities profs of that era tended to mock themselves or their hortations in order to avoid seeming uncool. It only struck me later, after I’d entered the Service’s TAC, that this substitute was actually the first instructor I’d seen at any of the schools I’d drifted in and out of who seemed a hundred percent indifferent about being liked or seen as cool or likable by the students, and realized—I did, once I’d entered the Service—what a powerful quality this sort of indifference could be in an authority figure. Actually, in hindsight, the substitute may have been the first genuine authority figure I ever met, meaning a figure with genuine ‘authority’ instead of just the power to judge you or squeeze your shoes from their side of the generation gap, and I became aware for the first time that ‘authority’ was actually something real and authentic, that a real authority was not the same as a friend or someone who cared about you, but nevertheless could be good for you, and that the authority relation was not a ‘democratic’ or equal one and yet could have value for both sides, both people in the relation. I don’t think I’m explaining this very well—but it’s true that I did feel singled out, spindled on those eyes in a way I neither liked nor didn’t, but was certainly aware of. It was a certain kind of power that he exerted and that I was granting him, voluntarily. That respect was not the same as coercion, although it was a kind of power. It was all very strange. I also noticed that now he had his hands behind his back, in something like the ‘parade rest’ military position.

  He said to the accounting students, ‘All right, then. Before you leave here to resume that crude approximation of a human life you have heretofore called a life, I will undertake to inform you of certain truths. I will then offer an opinion as to how you might most profitably view and respond to those truths.’ (I was immediately aware that he didn’t seem to be talking about the Advanced Tax final exam.) He said, ‘You will return to your homes and families for the holiday vacation and, in that festive interval before the last push of CPA examination study—trust me—you will hesitate, you will feel dread and doubt. This will be natural. You will, for what seems the first time, feel dread at your hometown chums’ sallies about accountancy as the career before you, you will read the approval in your parents’ smiles as an approval of your surrender—oh, I have been there, gentlemen; I know every cobble in the road you are walking. For the hour approaches. To begin, in that literally dreadful interval of looking down before the leap outward, to hear dolorous forecasts as to the sheer drudgery of the profession you are choosing, the lack of excitement or chance to shine on the athletic fields or ballroom floors of life heretofore.’ True, some of it I didn’t quite get—I don’t think too many of us in the classroom had spent a lot of time ‘shining on ballroom floors,’ but that might have been just a generational thing—he obviously meant it as a metaphor. I certainly got what he meant about accounting not seeming like a very exciting profession.

  The substitute continued, ‘To experience commitment as the loss of options, a type of death, the death of childhood’s limitless possibility, of the flattery of choice without duress—this will happen, mark me. Childhood’s end. The first of many deaths. Hesitation is natural. Doubt is natural.’ He smiled slightly. ‘You might wish to recall, then, in three weeks’ time, should you be so disposed, this room, this moment, and the information I shall now relay to you.’ He was obviously not a very modest or diffident person. On the other hand, his form of address didn’t sound nearly as formal or fussy at the time in Advanced Tax as it now sounds when I repeat it—or rather his summation was formal and a bit poetic but not artificially so, like a natural extension of who and what he was. It was not a pose. I remember thinking that maybe the sub had mastered that trick in Uncle Sam posters and certain paintings of seeming to look right at you no matter what angle you faced him from. That perhaps all the hushed and solemn older other students (you could hear a pin) felt picked out and specifically addressed as well—though, of course, that would make no difference as to its special effect on me, which was the real issue, just as the Christian girlfriend’s story would have already demonstrated if I’d been aware and attentive enough to hear what the actual point she was trying to make was. As mentioned, the version of me that listened to that story in 1973 or ’74 was a nihilistic child.

  After one or two other comments, with his hands still clasped behind his back, the substitute continued, ‘I wish to inform you that the accounting profession to which you aspire is, in fact, heroic. Please note that I have said “inform” and not “opine” or “allege” or “posit.” The truth is that what you soon go home to your carols and toddies and books and CPA examination preparation guides to stand on the cusp of is—heroism.’ Obviously, this was dramatic and held everyone’s attention. I remember thinking again, as he said this, of the A/V screen’s quote I had thought was biblical: ‘the moral equivalent of war.’ It seemed strange, but not ridiculous. I realized that my thinking about this quote was probably the first time I’d ever considered the word moral in any context other than a term paper—this was part of what I had initially started to become aware of a few days prior, in the experience while watching As the World Turns. The substitute was only of about average height. His eyes did not cut or wander. Some of the students’ glasses reflected light, still. One or two were still taking
notes, but other than that, nobody except the substitute spoke or moved.

  Continuing on without pause, he said, ‘Exacting? Prosaic? Banausic to the point of drudgery? Sometimes. Often tedious? Perhaps. But brave? Worthy? Fitting, sweet? Romantic? Chivalric? Heroic?’ When he paused, it wasn’t just for effect—at least not totally. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘—by which I mean, of course, latter adolescents who aspire to manhood—gentlemen, here is a truth: Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is. Such endurance is, as it happens, the distillate of what is, today, in this world neither I nor you have made, heroism. Heroism.’ He made a point of looking around, gauging people’s reaction. Nobody laughed; a few looked puzzled. I remember I was starting to have to go to the bathroom. In the classroom’s fluorescent lights, he cast no shadow on any side. ‘By which,’ he said, ‘I mean true heroism, not heroism as you might know it from films or the tales of childhood. You are now nearly at childhood’s end; you are ready for the truth’s weight, to bear it. The truth is that the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theater. The grand gesture, the moment of choice, the mortal danger, the external foe, the climactic battle whose outcome resolves all—all designed to appear heroic, to excite and gratify an audience. An audience.’ He made a gesture I can’t describe: ‘Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality—there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand? Here is the truth—actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested.’