The New Yorker has published an excerpt from David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King under the title “Backbone.” Many fans might have already heard the piece — and in Wallace’s own voice even — as it was part of the Lannan recordings and has been transcribed at least twice (although it appears one of those transcriptions has been taken down). (There’s also this fragment, by the way). Anyway, a taste–
Every whole person has ambitions, objectives, initiatives, goals. This one particular boy’s goal was to be able to press his lips to every square inch of his own body.
His arms to the shoulders and most of his legs beneath the knee were child’s play. After these areas of his body, however, the difficulty increased with the abruptness of a coastal shelf. The boy came to understand that unimaginable challenges lay ahead of him. He was six.
There is little to say about the original animus or “motive cause” of the boy’s desire to press his lips to every square inch of his own body. He had been housebound one day with asthma, on a rainy and distended morning, apparently looking through some of his father’s promotional materials. Some of these survived the eventual fire. The boy’s asthma was thought to be congenital.
Biblioklept 