(Source: 17steps)
Design by Chris Ayers
—————————-For fans of Michael Pemulis, Enfield Tennis Academy’s junior drug lord and supplier of clean urine.
A diagram of the characters and relationships in DFW’s first novel, “The Broom of the System.” There’s a real lack of content for this book out there, and it’s actually pretty underrated, so I thought I’d throw something together. It really helped me in keeping track of the characters, et.al.
The other day I saw a flyer on a telephone pole that there would be a public reading of excerpts from David Foster Wallace’s unfinished novel, The Pale King, in LA. Assumed it would be a low-key little thing in a bookstore. Got stoked, looked it up online to get details, turns out it’s a big ol’ shindig with Henry Rollins and a bunch of comic actors (Rob Delaney, Megan Mullally, Adam Scott, Nick Offerman, Casey Wilson, etc.) at the Saban Theater. Come on, Rollins and Delaney reading DFW? It’s ideal.
If this sounds as good to you as it does to me, you should come. Tickets available here.
As The Dude told Marty the landlord in The Big Lebowski,
“I’ll be there man.”
David Foster Wallace’s first draft of The Pale King
”
But the whole dark genius of corporations is that they allow for individual reward without individual obligation. The workers’ obligations are to the executives, and the executives’ obligations are to the CEO, and the CEO’s obligation is to the Board of Directors, and the Board’s obligation is to the stockholders, who are also the same customers the corporation will screw over at the very earliest opportunity in the name of profit, which profits are distributed as dividends to the very stockholder-slash-customers they’ve been fucking over in their own name. It’s like a fugue of evaded responsibility.
[…]
Corporations aren’t citizens or neighbors or parents. They can’t vote or serve in combat. They don’t learn the Pledge of Allegiance. They don’t have souls. They’re revenue machines. I don’t have any problem with that. I think it’s absurd to lay moral or civic obligations on them. Their only obligations are strategic, and while they can get very complex, at root they’re not civic entities. With corporations, I have no problem with government enforcement of statutes and regulatory policy serving a conscience function. What my problem is the way it seems that we as individual citizens have adopted a corporate attitude. That our ultimate obligation is to ourselves. That unless it’s illegal or there are direct practical consequences for ourselves, any activity is OK.
David Foster Wallace, The Pale King [2011] (via idiotlanguage)
(Source: referent)
^ Click the text for the full article.
Become a fan of The New Yorker on facebook to get a chance to read Jonathan Franzen’s essay on David Foster Wallace and Solitude. But you gotta hurry! It’s only going to remain on their facebook page for one more day! It’s a must read.
I’ve just created a facebook account just so I can read this - I’ve heard a lot about it. I hope don’t have to create a fake fb account many more times just so I can access content!
