Brow Beat

David Foster Wallace's unfinished novel The Pale King will be published next month, on Tax Day—a fitting premiere for a book about the denizens of anIRS processing center in 1980's Peoria, Ill. Thefirst review of the novel went up today on Publishers Weekly 's Web site.

The verdict? The PaleKing isn't "the era-defining monumental work we've all been waiting forsince Infinite Jest altered the landscapeof American fiction." But parts of it are "nothing short of sublime," othersare "pants-pissingly hilarious," and the chapters that center on a 20-year-oldcharacter named David Foster Wallace are "tiny masterpieces of that wholeself-aware po-mo thing of his that's so heavily imitated." Even in itsincomplete state, reviewer Jonathan Segura notes, "the book is unmistakably aDavid Foster Wallace affair."

If your appetite needs further whetting, you can read theexcerpts that have already trickled out:

From The New Yorker :" GoodPeople ," " WiggleRoom ," " AllThat ," " Backbone "
From Harper's (subscriptionrequired): " TheCompliance Branch ," " A New Examiner "

Elsewhere in Slate : Editors and writers remember David Foster Wallace; our critics discuss Infinite Jest ; James Ryerson explains DFW's debt to Wittgenstein; Troy Patterson eulogizes the author. Plus, the complete list of words DFW circled in his dictionary .   

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