IJ study archive

\"The Human Heart is a Chump\": Cataloging The Pale King

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TL;DR

Jenn Shapland's October 2012 Millions essay is a first-person account of cataloging the then-most-recent, Pale King installment of the David Foster Wallace papers at the Harry Ransom Center — a graduate intern's unexpectedly emotional descent into "a labyrinth of pages." Its lasting value is twofold: as a rare inside view of how the archive was physically formed and ordered (the Pietsch spreadsheet, the "From his desk" / "From his wire basket" provenance notes, the commonplace-book notebooks), and as a pointed dissent from Wallace-reception culture — "David Foster Wallace is a boys' club" — arguing against biographical myth-making and for reading the archive as an open web of questions rather than a key to the man. It advances no theory scoped to an Infinite Jest crux; the novel appears only at the edges of a Pale King essay.

Key claims

  • Shapland, a UT English PhD student who had "presented papers on marginalia in his book collection," catalogued the Pale King materials (archive boxes "numbered 36-41") while writing a master's thesis on Wallace's Midwest.
  • The materials: handwritten and typed scenes from the published book, a mass of "freewriting," lists of characters and possible names, maps, tax printouts, images of cubicle offices and IRS "tingle tables," a map of Peoria — each with "about a million tack points in it, or double-sided tape on the back," suggesting Wallace posted them on his walls. Alternate titles for the book included "Glitterer, Sir John Feelgood, and my personal favorite, What Is Peoria For?"
  • The order was preserved, not imposed: the cartons arrived with the spreadsheet "Little, Brown editor Michael Pietsch used to compile the wreck of pages" into The Pale King, plus itemized lists recording the order in which pages were found ("From his desk"; "From his wire basket").
  • The notebooks are the richest layer — "commonplace books" of Wallace's reading: quotes, clippings, definitions, jotted new words; covers of Cuddly Cuties kittens, Rugrats, butterflies, a Klimt print. Much of the content is "brief, piercing comments on what it's like to be alive everyday" and Midwestern overheard dialogue; one begins, "It's a lie that marriage means the end of romance."
  • Infinite Jest touchpoints (incidental): "There are notes that refer to the publication of Infinite Jest in 1996; some of the dates on the floppy discs precede it." — i.e., some Pale King material predates the novel's publication; and the Pale King draft phrase "the human heart is a chump."
  • Reception critique: Shapland resists "David Foster Wallace myth-creation," the "cult of personality," and the boys'-club discourse; she offers her essay as a deliberately different voice. The butterfly-notebook word she leaves the reader with: "Apohenia -- seeing connections where none exist" (sic; usually "apophenia").
  • Her closing reframing of the archive: within boxes 36-41 "lies not a single unfinished work but an infinite web of possible works" — The Pale King as one possible iteration among many.

Themes

Archives and the labor of cataloging; The Pale King and boredom/attention; Wallace-reception culture and its gender politics (the "boys' club"); the Midwest and the ordinary; marginalia and the commonplace book; the ethics of biographical myth-making. (These are Pale King- and reception-scoped; the note carries no Infinite Jest theory blocks.)

Cross-references

Notable passages

  • On the archive's emotional pull: the Pale King draft phrase "the human heart is a chump."
  • The reception thesis: "David Foster Wallace is a boys' club."
  • A notebook opener: "It's a lie that marriage means the end of romance."
  • The word she ends on: "Apohenia -- seeing connections where none exist."
  • The reframing: the boxes hold "not a single unfinished work but an infinite web of possible works."