Critic on David Foster Wallace
(born 21.2.1962 died by suicide 12.9.2008)
(born 21.2.1962 died by suicide 12.9.2008)
What's all about
Basing on an Eloge in a feuilletonist's critic on the Book "The Pale King" published first in 2011, after the suicide of Wallace, I ordered this book in a German translation, said to be the best translation in literature of the year (Ulrich Blumenbach).
This uncompleted NOVEL was said to be the best text, Wallace did ever write in his life. The topic is mainly the experiences of the writer with IRS, Internal Revenue Service, in Peoria, Illinois. IRS is the major tax control center of USA and known here in Europe as the major danger for international tax crooks, letting get down for example all banks in Switzerland.
Having to do with accounting and taxation, this was the area about MY profession on which no one in this world ever reached my standard, as I got after my universal studies in a top position in accounting. Far beyond normal auditing, I myself got all the intellectual errors made in view of theories in finances, accounting, economics and even any other field of human theories and behaviourism. And so it was a MUST for me to read this book.
The literary style
David Wallace seems not to be willing to tell a story like anybody else. In endless sentences, he starts to talk of something, changes the subject to come back within the same sentence on past diffuse effects - and again going to heaven for other thoughts he may have had by impulse during the writing process or else on intention to be important. When he introduces a person, he may situate him or her within the novel some 100 pages later and just tells a story of for example the youth or the ticks of that given person.
The way he discusses the situations, the problems (Americans say today "challenges"), the sense of life or just what was going on around 1975, in daily life of America, mainly here in the offices of IRS, or also in his youth, I am wondering why just one person should read his books. The reason is his psychological feeling about humans, to know more not of life, but of what's going on, when some sorts of Cliff Hangers are given on each page of the book. The reader is interested to know more, but he never gets the real food.
The language is extremely rich with expressions I never heard during my life. The German translations of some given facts or words, even being one of the best in the profession he is describing, limited to taxation here, surpasses my horizon, but the same could be said if an American expert should read about the details of an European IRS system in fact.
Each new chapter in the book has nothing to do with what the foregoing chapter was telling and this seems to be some sort of "Wallacism" - the readers and fans of his books seem to love over other authors of America. We could say, Wallace writing is without a recognizable structure, but who likes to be made more important than he is in fact, may love such books.
The contents
It is quickly recognizable why Wallace needed years to write a novel, because the facts on the topic are so wide spread, that it goes largely over the normal descriptions of the functioning of IRS and any other of such gigantic offices with ten thousands of employees in a given State.
He describes situations in a huge office full of half-dead controllers in tax declaration checks, the forms 1040 and hundred others, of which Wallace describes down to the last detail. He writes how he found the job, the difficult ways during his getting all of the instructions, the travels and misery of highway planning, the nature of each colleague and the whole organisation of IRS.
He seems sometime just to copy large instruction sheets of IRS one by one, or articles appearing in newspapers, or dialogues down to the last word, without writing who was saying what at the time. He is able to copy the slang of the most stupid auditor up the talks of the Top Shots of IRS and their philosophical idiocies about IRS, laughing about the tricks to make the richest of USA not pay taxes by rules and deductions of income, in a way, the great mass could not get how it might happen by laws of Washington Parliament and else to give all privileges to the rich Class of USA.
The atmosphere given in USA around 1960 to 1990 is given in sharp tones and he knows what he is writing about. At least I myself know now even better, why USA got down to hell already by the years when USA seemed intact before the Jews around Ronald and Friedman started the craze of total destruction of all finance systems of the globe.
The knowledge
According to Wikipedia, Wallace was not writing in "The Pale King" about his own life, what seemed totally different and on a much higher scale of intellect and more orderly family situations than is true for the poor chap with name David Wallace in the IRS novel.
It is very clear from the book, that Wallace had an immense feeling and knowledge about psychology, about mechanics in all fields of daily life. He writes a lot about the given politic systems under Carter and Ronald. He looks down on the world as I do in my literature, from high above, but contrary to me, he understands nothing of what's going on in this world of fools. He gets the point that "something" in the U.S. got out of control, with behaviour, with traffic, with finances, with control of states, with characters, but WHAT it is, Wallace did not get until his suicide. To know much but the wrong matters in this world, must lead to suicide for a very intellectual person indeed.
All about behaviourism
Wallace is fully restricted to the behaviourism of Americans. He knows nothing of other folks and their different behaviourism. He seems to know how rich and mighty folks may think, as much as for the poorest whore and office boy, but he does not know what to do with such knowledge than describing what happens during the day, the year, his life-time.
As about 99 per cent of all writers of the globe, Wallace also is only interested about what people do, what happens in society, the luck and misery of some persons or within one person, just through the normal way of destiny during the life of any person out of the 7 billion.
So it can be said that Wallace knew very much about the ticks and psychological sickness of persons, their panic attacks, their wishes, their different characters, the mistakes about the behaviour of persons, be they important or just little animals, trying to survive before death. Very interesting - but also very limited.
Wallace is a typical writer out of the 99 per cent, wanting to know all about what happens and nothing of the background, why the world is as a whole, what it is, but more of this stuff later.
What did DF Wallace know
Wallace did know what average folks do, how they think, how they function, what weaknesses and strong sides they may have, about hierarchy, about power, about the Amis being nuts and getting more crazy from year to year and even he knew, how this might end some given day in the future.
For each novel he seemed to have made recherches down to hell and tried to get about ALL here, we could know about IRS. But from my view, he knew nothing about the international accounting and tax systems, making the rich richer, the great conglomerates not paying 10 per cent on their profits, tax paradises, exemptions, and the tricks in accounting, in balances sheets, in going public, the craze with fusions and the intents of the powerful, to let all charges of States to middle class and the poor.
Wallace did not even guess the problem of worldwide tax fraud and the reason for State deficits leading to the bankruptcy of all banks and States, considering the Crimes of the Jews of Wall Street and City of London, around the year 2000 and ending in a disaster by 2020.
So we can say that Wallace knew a lot about what he was interested in, the American way of life and behaviourism in his surrounding, putting this knowledge in language, endless sentences with low-profile sense - and this were his limits, more never could be guessed.
The limits of DF Wallace
I said it before, who cannot read the errors of philosophy, of religion, of finances and economics, of all theories in economics and the crazy way of destroying a planet and exhausting it within 200 years, basing on easy recognizable idiocy of humans, such an individual knows nothing.
Who does not get that all Chiefs of States, all ministers, all bankers, all professors, all experts and all humans of the 99,99 per cent have shit in the brains and do not know ten per cent of what's going on all around this planet coming to his virtual and true end, such a writer knows nothing. He could just as well write about the growing up of the grass in his garden, than to write about the eternal same idiocies of the human behaviour in all nations of our rotten globe.
After some pages of reading I guessed already that Wallace would write like all other writers about human behaviour, what is happing in daily life, what seems to be the decisions of the Elite of idiots, what seems to be past, present and future history and why are things as they are, how should be a "perfect world" without ever seeing behind the long, long chain of origins and effects of all, what's going on in politics, finances, economics, outpowering a planet with resources used up in 100 years, wars without sense and the torturing of persons, that are not evidently tortured, only given by their ecologic end - before 2099 - planned down to the last detail.
Like all idiots of the 99,99 per cent inclusive Obama, Putin, Merkel, Hollande, Ronald and Blair and Mandela, Xi, Singh, Lula and all the rest of idiotic folks including their MEDIA around the whole globe, Wallace got about half of daily idiocy and nothing about the automatics of idiotic systems in technology, science, philosophy, capitalism, socialism and else.
The sentence "Political attitudes do not destroy the planet, only the systems not understood by the exploding world pops will do..." could never be understood by Wallace or any other person in this world and this being one of the reasons, my 10 marvellous books did never find a reader of intellect, understanding just one line of them.
Why Wallace committed suicide
More and more I got the problem, why a person and famous and rich writer like Wallace was deciding to end with his days.
From his novel it became very clear that the depressions, the panic attacks, the thinking in spirals without end, the fact of not being the master of his own brain, was one of the major problems with Wallace.
A further matter was his feeling guilty not reaching the level of thinking and feeling, leading up to a better recognition about what's going on in time and place during his life from 1962 to 2008. Under such conditions, I would have killed myself long time ago.
There must be perhaps some other personal reasons of which nobody can know why Wallace, who knew about the fact that any person by the end is dead, to get there in his paradise of religion a little faster as the rest. In fact, it is of no importance to see Wallace go in the light of the coming 25 billion of idiots, having planned the end of the planet, without water, resources, energy, living in stone heaps of mega-towns, being crazy and paranoid in mind and not seeing a given and irrevocable collapse of climate and weather-machine with always more gigantic droughts, sint-floods, super-storms and monster-waves, and about exactly THIS never entered in the mind of poor Wallace. Would he have got what are the mechanics of the late world of his days, he would never have committed suicide.
Some last words
I have written all what other authors would never be able to write about the functioning of our world from the Big Bang to the End of Humanity by 2099.
But it is interesting to criticise the formal and fundamental errors in thinking of the few of best authors of USA, a land preparing the downfall of the rest of the globe, inclusive China, Japan, India and Switzerland.
More is not to be said now at the beginning of the year 2014, when again the end of the systems will be seen sharper by some few geniuses, before the year 2015 will start - friends. And the VIPs and stupid masses will go ahead like lemmings and run over the cliff as predicted.
René Delavy - Berlin and Bournemouth
written on December 22, 2013