David Foster Wallace’s Novel 'The Pale King' To Be Finished by James Patterson
While He's At It...
The soulless best-selling author James Patterson is also going to finish David Foster Wallace's The Pale King after he completes that weird Michael Crichton volcano manuscript.
Of course by "finish" we mean he'll get one of his unremarkable and underpaid ghostwriters to work on it until he swoops in and takes all the credit. He's like the dentist who comes in to check your teeth after the hygienist does all the hard work, really.
It will be up to Patterson to get into DFW's headspace and figure it all out. And if he can't do it....he'll still publish, sell it, and make a shitload of cash.
The Pale King was DFW's third and unfinished novel, a labor of love for the author before he took his own life in 2008. It was finally published in 2011, but readers and fans wonder what could have been if he indeed had lived to complete it.
Representatives from Wallace's estate contacted Patterson and provided him and his team with boxes and boxes of notes, letters, and thrown-away plotlines. There were also several possible endings Wallace toyed with but not able to realize at the time of his death.
It will be up to Patterson to get into DFW's headspace and figure it all out. And if he can't do it....he'll still publish, sell it, and make a shitload of cash.
The Pale King is a complicated book and over 500 pages. Despite being unfinished, it took Wallace over a decade to write it. Longtime friend and publisher Michael Pietsch was tasked with trying to organize it into a publishable form, but still considers it incomplete.
Patterson and his team think they can wrap it up in about 20 minutes.
CBS News Sunday Morning or some other show for old people sat down with Patterson to talk about the project.
"Okay, so the book is about pain, depression, and trying to construct some sort of meaning out of life. Well what if Pirates showed up at the IRS in Peoria and just started taking things from Claude Sylvanshine's office? Then what?"
The interviewer just shrugged.
"Well, things would get pretty crazy from there. Would Claude just sit idly and watch, or would he join the pirates and start looting?"
The interviewer wondered if Patterson was just rehashing a plot from one of his young adult adventure book series Treasure Hunters.
"Yes, but stay with us," chimed in one of his ghostwriters from offset. "Imagine the crime then gets investigated by this black detective, let's call him "Alex Cross." And then he and Claude get locked in a game of wits until a showdown occurs in Washington, DC."
"Um."
"Yes, I know that is just the plot of Along Came a Spider," said the peon ghostwriter, "but it's just filler until we can come up with something else."
Patterson interjected: "It's obvious to anyone with any sense at all that this will be the book that both me and DFW will be known for."