Around six months ago I got the idea to post a transcription of David Foster Wallace reading a then-unpublished story that I called 'The Boy'. It bookended a shorter piece about a baby being scalded to death that I didn't transcribe.

Yesterday, I came to discover that tumblr removed the post, apparently in anticipation of a real edit being published in The New Yorker.

Now given that the two versions are substantially different, it seems like a responsible idea to permit comparison on the part of them what have an interest. I have no idea how many of these edits are Wallace and how many are Pietsch and The New Yorker, or if this is an excerpt from The Pale King. UPDATE: It is an excerpt from The Pale King.

➜Here are the two stories merged, with changes tracked (.pdf/GoogleDocs 243kB)

The older version. As read at the Lannan Foundation, December 6th, 2000 (.docx/GoogleDocs 173kB)

The newer version. As published in The New Yorker, February 28th, 2011 (.docx/GoogleDocs 168kB)