The Pale King Cometh: Posthumous Novel By David Foster Walla

David Foster Wallace's highly-anticipated posthumous novel following the often tedious and laborious lives of a baker's dozen and then some of IRS employees working in a small town in Illinois is now available for purchase on various booksellers' web sites, including Amazon.com and B&N.com.

The book, entitled The Pale King, is slated for wide release on April 15th -- that is, on tax day, in honor of TPK’s central characters’ occupation: accounting. But it is, as has been mentioned, available to buy online right now.

Wallace's novel has already been reviewed by The New York Times book critic Michiko Kakatuni, who calls TPK "deeply sad," "deeply philosophical," "lumpy but often stirring," "by turns breathtakingly brilliant and stupefying dull," and "funny, maddening and elegiac." Kakatuni also notes that, "in a Kierkegaardian note at the end of this book," Wallace suggests that happiness is the ability to pay attention, to live in the present moment, and to find, as Wallace writes, "second-by-second joy + gratitude at the gift of being alive."

Happy reading.

(NYT: Maximized Revenue, Minimized Existence)

(Related: David Foster Wallace's Latest (and Posthumous) Novel About, Among Other Things, the IRS and Tedium, Will Be Released On Tax Day (April 15) in 2011)