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New Yorker to Run Excerpt of Wallace's Last Book

In Pale King , deceased writer 'didn't want to do the old tricks'

By Drew Nelles, Newser Staff

Posted Mar 1, 2009 4:43 PM CST

(Newser) – David Foster Wallace fans can get a glimpse of the deceased writer’s unfinished novel tomorrow, when the New Yorker publishes an excerpt from The Pale King, the Washington Post reports. Wallace, who killed himself last fall, had been working on the book for years. The magazine will also run an article tracing The Pale King’s saga.

"I had the uncanny experience of feeling joy where I expected to find grief," Wallace’s longtime editor says of the novel. The writer’s wife and agent discovered The Pale King when they cleaned out his home office in November. Wallace aimed to get past the "self-consciously maximalist style" of his well-known Infinite Jest, the New Yorker writes, with his wife saying he “didn't want to do the old tricks people expected of him.”

[Images (2)]

[Quotes (2)]

David Foster Wallace reads selections of his writing during the New Yorker Magazine Festival on September 27, 2002. The magazine will posthumously publish an excerpt from Wallace's unfinished novel. (Getty Images)

David Foster Wallace killed himself last September. (©Steve Rhodes)

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The Pale King...had to put over the point that the kind of personality that conferred grace was exactly the kind that Wallace did not have. - D.T. Max, writing in the New Yorker

It took us about two months before we could face going into this room. It was like he was there. - Wallace's agent Bonnie Nadell, of his home office

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New Yorker to Run Excerpt of Wallace's Last Book