David Foster Wallace’s posthumous novel The Pale King (2012) is incomplete, but its best sections demonstrate the power of Wallace’s fiction.
THEME
Set in an IRS office, the novel concerns various characters attempting to find meaning in rote, often dull work. Wallace sees their dilemma as an ethical one. Characters thrive when they discover that their work concerns something larger than themselves. Their insight is not rarely religious, but it is always spiritual.
Experiments in Criticism 