The Pale King: An interview with Mark Costello '84 and Andrew Parker, professor of English

Summary: The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Ill., appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace’s death in 2008, but it is a deeply intriguing and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook.