Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Posthumous Works

There is talk of The Pale King. David Foster Wallace's posthumous novel. The thought of it is both tantalizing and frightening. I approach such posthumous works with serious apprehension. As is the case with Ralph Ellison's Three Days Before the Shooting. I've seen the massive tome on several bookshelves, secretly willing myself to read it while fearful of the covenant I'd be entering. These works hold in them a Benjaminian aura of the author's immortality--extending a will beyond the grave.
The N over the Manhattan Bridge (from Manhattan Island into Long Island) is most exciting as it begins its ascent. I like to see the streets of Chinatown, wide and lit in neon. Cars double parked. Graffiti as evidence of some acrobatic artist. Today on the way home, I wondered about immortality. Death, like anything conceived, is a finite point. Beyond which lies our infinite.
Here is "Wiggle Room"--an excerpt from The Pale King published by the New Yorker.

-Andrew E. Colarusso

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