The Pale King

Set in the oppressive fluorescent glow of an IRS tax-return processing center in Peoria, Illinois, The Pale King is a novel that confronts head-on one of the greatest challenges of life and art: the ordinary, the familiar, soul-dampening routine. The Pale King defies centuries of novelistic tradition. Where others have highlighted life's dramas, Wallace expands on the everyday, setting scenes in office cubicles, in cars stuck in traffic, on elevators stopped between floors. Doing this, Wallace reveals life as a heroic challenge. In his world the familiar is the water we swim in, and only through it can we arrive at joy, meaning, and love. In the stories of these tax processors, Wallace illuminates timeless questions with a humanity and humor that was uniquely his. Although incomplete, The Pale King is nonetheless profound, deeply moving, and a novel for the ages. THE PALE KING remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply intriguing and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions--questions of life's meaning and of the ultimate value of work and family--through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for a writer who dared to take on the most daunting subjects the human spirit can imagine.