An interview with Michael Pietsch over at the Atlantic, 'The Pale King': David Foster Wallace's Editor on the Book's Path to Print. Plenty of spoilers:
How did you go about ordering a novel that, by its own design, seeks to be non-linear, seeks to challenge, seeks to strain the limits of a reader's expectations?
I had the extraordinary guidepost of Infinite Jest, which I think the reader is something like 350 pages into before they've met all the characters and have all the elements of the story up in their heads. I think one of David's methods was flood the reader with pleasure with many different kinds of stories that were so entertaining and so funny and so interesting and so beautiful that they kept opening up, and taking more and more—and then he'd work with that enormous assemblage to create something even larger.
So I read again and took notes, and read again and took notes, and read again and took notes. I tracked everything I read in terms of whether it was a unique piece, or whether it was a version that existed in other forms. If other versions existed, I'd look at all the multiple versions to find what appeared to be the last version. Once I had all of the distinct pieces, I read them again to try to understand the story that was within them. And gradually, I saw that there was a chronological sequence and spine to the novel. There were characters who arrived at a particular date, and things happened in a particular order.
So the main work of assembling the novel was finding those things that needed to happen an order for the reader to make sense of what was happening—and then arraying the other pieces, which are less time-specific, around those in a way that creates what I hope will be a pleasurable flow of David Wallace—of his brilliant, brilliant range of voices, and narrative techniques, and ideas.
I had the extraordinary guidepost of Infinite Jest, which I think the reader is something like 350 pages into before they've met all the characters and have all the elements of the story up in their heads. I think one of David's methods was flood the reader with pleasure with many different kinds of stories that were so entertaining and so funny and so interesting and so beautiful that they kept opening up, and taking more and more—and then he'd work with that enormous assemblage to create something even larger.
So I read again and took notes, and read again and took notes, and read again and took notes. I tracked everything I read in terms of whether it was a unique piece, or whether it was a version that existed in other forms. If other versions existed, I'd look at all the multiple versions to find what appeared to be the last version. Once I had all of the distinct pieces, I read them again to try to understand the story that was within them. And gradually, I saw that there was a chronological sequence and spine to the novel. There were characters who arrived at a particular date, and things happened in a particular order.
So the main work of assembling the novel was finding those things that needed to happen an order for the reader to make sense of what was happening—and then arraying the other pieces, which are less time-specific, around those in a way that creates what I hope will be a pleasurable flow of David Wallace—of his brilliant, brilliant range of voices, and narrative techniques, and ideas.
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