In 2007, Wallace estimated that the novel was about one-third finished. The novel (or 'long thing', Wallace's usual term for it) had numerous working titles throughout this period, including Glitterer, SJF ( Sir John Feelgood), Net of Gems, and What is Peoria For? Wallace began research for The Pale King in 1997, after the publication of Infinite Jest. He further states, in the context of the same self-referential paradox, that ' The Pale King is a kind of vocational memoir' and that 'the very last thing this book is is some kind of clever metafictional titty-pincher.' Other primary characters include Lane Dean Jr., Claude Sylvanshine, David Cusk, and Leonard Stecyk, men drawn for vastly different reasons to a career in the IRS. In this chapter, he introduces the 'irksome paradox' that the only bona fide fiction in the book is the copyright page's disclaimer that states 'The characters and events in this book are fictitious,' while at the same time acknowledging that this foreword itself is defined by that disclaimer as fictional. The fictional 'Author's Foreword' is chapter 9 and is the place in the novel where Wallace's trademark footnotes run most rampant. Pietsch called the organization of the manuscript 'a challenge like none I've ever encountered'. One of the characters, one of two who narrate their chapters, is named David Wallace, but he is a largely fictional counterpart of the author and not the focal point of the novel. Many of the chapters relate the experiences of a handful of employees of the Internal Revenue Service in Peoria, Illinois in 1985. Each chapter stands almost alone, with text ranging from straight dialogues between coworkers about civics or cartography to snippets of the 1985 Illinois tax code to poignant sensory or character sketches. Like much of Wallace's work, the novel defies straightforward summary. The novel was one of the three finalists for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, but no award was given that year. Even incomplete, The Pale King is a long work, with 50 chapters of varying length totaling over 500 pages.

Wallace had been working on the novel for over a decade.

That material was compiled by his friend and editor Michael Pietsch into the form that was eventually published. Before his suicide in 2008, Wallace organized the manuscript and associated computer files in a place where they would be found by his widow, Karen Green, and his agent, Bonnie Nadell. It was planned as Wallace's third novel, and the first since Infinite Jest in 1996, but it was not completed at the time of his death. The Pale King is an unfinished novel by David Foster Wallace, published posthumously on April 15, 2011.

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