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Designing The Pale King

Marie Mundaca designed a few of David Foster Wallace’s books, including The Pale King.

As it turned out, it was too distracting and sad for me to read while I was designing it. Wallace’s tiny, pointy notes were all over the manuscript copy, mostly name changes and corrections and small additions. One character, Elise Prout, used to be a “G3,” and a phrase that said “been squashed like a cartoon character” was changed to “worn the brown helmet.” His notes reminded me of the post-it notes that would come back to me on galley pages of the essay “Host” from Consider the Lobster โ€” notes that said things like “Totally bitchingly great” โ€” and I remembered that I no longer lived in a world where David Foster Wallace was alive.

(thx, mike)