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A long, unfinished novel by David Foster Wallace is scheduled for a posthumous release next year.

''The Pale King,'' excerpted in The New Yorker magazine edition coming out Monday, is set in an Internal Revenue Service office in Illinois in the 1980s.

Wallace's longtime publisher, Little, Brown and Company, will release the novel. Little, Brown said in a statement Sunday that the novel runs ''several hundred thousand words and will include notes, outlines, and other material.''

Coming in late to say, Yay, Knut!

Hey, I can say I beta'd one of Knut's books way back when!

FAME WHORE

Anyway, hi y'all, have missed you.

Karen Chance: read the first novel, was bored.

Rachel Caine: read the Weather series, liked it well enough, but not wonderfully. Like her Morganville Vampires series better, although it's not supergreat either, but it's entertaining.

Read the first 2 "Kitty" books -- thought they were ok. Haven't bothered with the rest.

Anyone read the latest Anne Bishop novel? My sister grabbed it for me when I was in bed recovering, and I thought it was quite a decent read. She's one of those authors who is best in her primary world -- the Blood series I quite like, but her other novels, to me, are pretty boring. Like Jacqueline Carey -- I like her Terre d'Ange series, but the Godslayer books were just terrible to me. I didn't even read the second one, Godslayer was so damned boring.

Excuse me please, for crashing into this thread, but I'm searching down the source of what I think is a Shakespeare quote, and I Just.Can't.Find the damned thing on the interwebs myself, so I'm hoping it will ping one of you...

I was reading a story that uses a lot of references to Romeo and Juliet, and I've tracked down all but the Istabul/Constantinople mentions. At one point the two lovers are about to be tragically separated, and one says to the other: "Years from now," Nick said, his voice rough and uneven. "In Istanbul. I'll wait for you." And when they are finally reunited, "Thy lips are warm," Nick murmured, and JC's heart pounded in his chest again. / "Istanbul to Constantinople," he replied, and kissed the curve of Nick's smile.

There was no reason anywhere in the story for them to be referring to Istanbul, so I assumed it was part of the R&J homage. Not to mention that it sounds vaguely familiar to me, as though I ought to be able to place it. What about you guys? Does it ring any bells? (Other than Oz and Willow, that is.)

Well, it's not in Romeo & Juliet, I found a searchable copy, and neither Istanbul nor Constantinople are there.

Heh. It's a They Might Be Giants song, but no Shakespeare that I know of.

Connie, thanks for looking. It's been so many years since I read the play start-to-finish that I couldn't be certain. And yet, it does seem like it's nudging at my memory somehow.

"Thy lips are warm." is from Romeo and Juliet. It is what Juliet says after the Romeo's fake suicide just before she commits the real thing with a dagger. The Istanbul to Constantinople thing, not so much that I can find.

I'm assuming it's a They Might Be Giants thing. What with the whole date reference.

I thought perhaps Constantinople might be referenced in Antony and Cleopatra, if anything, but I just did a quick search on a searchable text version, and evidently not.

And, really, (although this is the kind of sweeping assertion that just begs someone to come prove you wrong) I can't see Shakespeare writing "Istanbul to Constantinople" - from his POV the transition would be Constantinople to Istanbul, anyway, and although Istanbul was a term in use from the 10th Century, I don't know how common it would have been in Britain at that period.

Well, it's a TMBG cover. That's an old song.