Few things are more intriguing than an unfinished novel. With fitting symmetry, two books have been published posthumously in the past two years: Nabokov’s The Original Laura and Jose Saramango’s Cain. This year, Little Brown is to publish The Pale King, an unfinished work by David Foster Wallace – a claimant to the title of Great American Novelist, who took his own life in September 2008.
Publication has been delayed twice by what one publisher described as ‘entirely foreseeable circumstances’. Obviously, sensitivity is paramount in this tragic case, but it seems that The Pale King is finally ready to be crowned. Precise publication details remain obscure, but editors on both side of the Atlantic are applying delicate gloss to Foster Wallace’s manuscript, and doubtless final legal issues are being resolved.
As to the book’s content, only the Penguin elect are in the know.
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