The King is so not pale

A really short excerpt from David Foster Wallace's The Pale King. Just to show what a bleeping genius we have lost.

Our house was outside of the city, off one of the blacktop roads. We had us a big dog that my daddy would keep on a chain in the front yard. A big part German shepherd. I hated the chain but we didn't have a fence, we were right off the road there. The dog hated that chain. But he had dignity. What he'd do, he'd never go out to the length of the chain. He'd never even go out to where the chain got tight. Even if the mailman pulled up,  or a salesman. Out of dignity, this dog pretended like he chose this one area to stay in that just happened to be inside the length of the chain. Nothing outside of that area right there interested him. He just had zero interest. So he never noticed the chain. He didn't hate it. The chain. He just up and made it not relevant. Maybe he wasn't pretending- maybe he really up and chose that little circle for his own world. He had a power to him. All of his life on that chain. I loved that damn dog.