As I was rushing out the door to spend Christmas with my in-laws in northern Japan, I grabbed this off the shelf as the best single book at hand that would last me through the 10 day trip. I was not disappointed. There are several indications of despair in the book, but for the most part it is DFW hard at work on wry jokes, long detailed descriptions, interesting personal stories for selected characters and a bit of informative social discussion/analysis. The de rigor shit and booger jokes are classic DFW, but mostly it is high level wit. The narrative is, as one would expect, disjointed, but characters are developed and stories are told, and the pieces tie together with each other. There is no ending or even any trajectory or arc, because, sadly, we all know the ending. 
 A REQUEST: 
 Back in 2009 or 2010 the New Yorker published a short story by DFW that, since it appeared shortly (within 12 months?) after another DFW short story that was from The Pale King (the tax examiner piece on boredom), I had assumed it was also from this book. The story was about a boy who received a toy cement mixer one Christmas and his parents told him that the cement mixer would move on its own. The narrator describes the boy's painful efforts to catch the cement mixer moving on-its-own, but he never could. It ended on a scene with his father watching reports on the Vietnam War on the evening news. I subsequently lost the issue, and have searched the New Yorker's on line archive in vain (their search function is a bad joke). I thought it was part of the Pale King but alas it is not. If anyone has any information on where I can find this piece, please contact me.