David Foster Wallace Would Object

When it comes to advising their executors, even the most posterity-minded writers can fall short of being comprehensive. David Foster Wallace left a manuscript bathed in lamplight in the garage where he worked and so the publication last year of The Pale King: an Unfinished Novel, could be seen as a fulfilment of the author’s wishes or at least as an exercise conducted in basic accordance with them. If Both Flesh and Not can’t exactly be called a violation, then that is only because it wouldn’t have occurred to Wallace to leave instructions such as “Don’t put between hard covers articles I have chosen to omit from both of my essay collections,” or: “As for my book-of-the-year selection from 1994, I’m happy for it to languish in Spin magazine, there for scholars, librarians and diehard fans to unearth. Nobody should have to pay for that.”