The Pale King
An Unfinished Novel
Book Summary
The character David Foster Wallace is introduced to the banal world of the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, and the host of strange people who work there, in a novel that was unfinished at the time of the author's death. By the author of Infinite Jest. 100,000 first printing.
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NPR stories about The Pale King
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David Foster Wallace's posthumously published, unfinished novel, The Pale King, clocks in at over 500 densely printed pages. No matter. Every few block paragraphs or so, a sentence will bubble to the surface that's so genuine, it makes you realize how artificial, by comparison, so much other fiction is. The Pale King, which is ostensibly about an IRS agent and his officemates, is an epic about work — its dullness and its demands. This is a singular novel, and the fact that
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