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
