the pale king by david foster wallace

Chapter summaries

1. Description of Midwestern landscape.

2. Sylvanshine on plane. Thinking about test. Nervous, self-loathing.

3. Masturbation conversation. Characters unknown.

4. Frederick Blumquist has been dead for four days at work.

5. Steyck's childhood. Acts perfectly while mother is in coma.

6. Lane Dean has impregnated Sheri Fisher. She lets him go.

7. Sylvanshine rides to work in a repossessed Mr. Squishee truck.

8. Toni Ware grows up in trailer park, fends off boys, cuts their brake lines and leaves sewage under their porches.

9. "David Wallace" the false author is introduced. Forced to work at IRS after getting expelled from college for writing papers for others. Meditation on memoir v. fiction.

12. Steyck hands out zip code directories in the neighborhood.

13. Cusk's childhood, his neuroses around perspiration.

14. Stecyk initiates a documentary about IRS employees. Description of IRS evolving into a capitalistic, revenue-generating organization.

15. Sylvanshine is revealed as a "fact psychic", a person who can intuit useless minutiae.

18. The Pale King is revealed to be the boss prior to DeWitt Glendenning. All we know is that he was less "agent-morale-oriented".

19. A discussion about the nature of American democracy takes place in a stalled elevator.

21. A business owner commits tax fraud by using the social security numbers of senile old ladies to represent temporary employees.

22. Long chapter about the college years of "Irrelevant" Chris Fogle, his drug use, his self-absorption, the violent death of his father, how he counts the number of words that people say, epiphany with the Jesuit accounting professor that the tedious life is heroic.

24. David Wallace is stuck in a car with Fogle and Cusk. Meditation on the urban planning and construction practices that cause traffic jams. He begins orientation with Chahla Neti-Neti "The Iranian Crisis" who, in a footnote, fellates him.

26. A description of the phantoms that haunt the Regional Examination Center.

27. Cusk sweats during training. David Wallace is mistakenly placed with experts.

32. An examiner has his sister imitate "The Exorcist" on speakerphone.

33. A meditation on boredom and the history of the word.

35. Manshart's ugly infant son is in his office. He turns to the narrator and says "Well?"

36. Growing up, a boy attempts to train himself to kiss every part of his body. His father has serial affairs.

38. Explanation of the computer error that caused David Wallace to show up at the wrong office.

39. Steyck earns the respect of his adolescent peers by administering first aid to the shop teacher's severed thumb.

40. Cusk enumerates his fears in therapy.

42. "Colorado Todd" describes a methamphetamine binge.

43. There is a terrorist attack on another office.

44. The ability to "function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human" is championed. Is this not the thrust of the book?

45. Toni Ware avoids being murdered by playing dead by not blinking for several minutes.

46. Meredith Rand and Shane Drinion have a meta-conversation about physical attractiveness. Drinion levitates towards the end.

47. Toni Ware pretends that she has been assaulted by a convenience store clerk.

49. The story of Merril Errol Lehrl creating the requirement that social security numbers accompany dependents, even though the numbers are never cross-checked. This generates 1.2 billion in revenue the first year.