The Pale King

A posthumously published (on April 14, 2011) collection of writing fragments that revolve around an assortment of characters who work at the Peoria, Illinois IRS Regional Examination Center, The Pale King is hardly a novel in any traditional sense. While there are recurring characters in multiple situations, D.F. Wallace was far from ready to release this material to the world. No doubt he would be aghast to find that we have it available in published form. Which is not to say that there is no enjoyment to be found in his writing. Far from it. Many of the pieces are astounding bits, hilarious, intense, descents into weird gibberish, maddeningly opaque, clever word pictures, but never boring. It is boredom in fact that the book is ostensibly about:

...I discovered, in the only way that a man ever really learns anything important, the real skill that is required to succeed in a bureaucracy...

The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air.

The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable. I met, in the years 1984 and '85, two such men.

It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.

 But don't be looking for a plot.

in pre production

Looks like we've got a script and at least one of two actors. Here are some possible locations not too far from home, not close enough. I'm sorely tempted to make it so that we could shoot the entire project in the back yard.

Sorry to be so typically vague, but at least I know what I mean. At least, I think I do.

More as we progress towards the first fictional piece I've worked on in...24 years. Too long, that's for certain. No details other than a tentative schedule of early July.