Once a year, every year, we鈥檙e forced to think about taxes. It鈥檚 mercifully short, 颅because while filling out our return forms, searching for old receipts and crosschecking deduction numbers, it鈥檚 abundantly clear how difficult, complicated and 颅utterly boring the whole process is. Tax law is dense and repellant to the general public, so it came as a great surprise to many that until his death, David Foster Wallace, one of the most 颅respected writers of his generation, had been working on a massive novel about the American IRS and the people who work there.
The Pale King, as the novel was called, expounds at length the heroic virtue of working quietly for year after year doing monotonous work that receives no applause. It caught the attention of Art Cockfield (Law鈥93), a professor of tax law at Queen鈥檚 and an admirer of Wallace鈥檚 work. The novel, with its frequent asides about tax revisions, surprised Dr. Cockfield as much as anyone 鈥 with publications to his name like 鈥淓xamining Policy Options for the Taxation of Outbound Direct 颅Investment,鈥 he knows that tax law isn鈥檛 for the faint of heart. When Dr. Cockfield was named the Fulbright Visiting Chair of Policy Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, he took the opportunity to indulge his curiosity. In between writing more orthodox articles about tax policy, he went to the university鈥檚 archives, home to Wallace鈥檚 颅collected works, and dove in.
鈥淚t was a very happy coincidence,鈥 says Dr. 颅Cockfield. 鈥淚 started searching through the 颅thousands of pages of Wallace鈥檚 old notes and the writings gave me some insight into what he was thinking.鈥
The result is 鈥淒avid Foster Wallace on Tax 颅Policy, How to Be an Adult, and Other Mysteries of the 颅Universe,鈥 a recently published article in the 颅Pittsburg Tax Review that tackles one of The Pale King鈥檚 major themes: boredom in the 颅workplace and how to deal with it. Unusually for a tax law article, the work 颅attracted significant media 颅discussion, in The Independent and The Paris Review, among others. [Read it 颅online.]
鈥淥ne of the great existential challenges of modernity is workplace boredom,鈥 says Dr. 颅Cockfield. 鈥淔or most of history, you worked from sunup to sundown and were probably too exhausted to feel bored 鈥 being bored was a luxury.鈥
But Dr. Cockfield says that Wallace believed there was something deeply important about 颅boredom, and so he populated his novel with IRS workers whose work is so mind-numbing, they鈥檙e given boredom-survival training.
鈥淲hat I think he鈥檚 driving at is that work 鈥 what we do all day 鈥 is important to our identity. If we look at it as tedium, it crushes us, but if we decide to push through it, we can be much happier,鈥 Dr. Cockfield says. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e going to do something every day, you should try to make it 颅interesting.鈥
For Wallace, it鈥檚 the trying that counts. If we鈥檙e thoughtful, present and make an effort to see the importance of a repetitive task, it becomes 颅exhilarating. It鈥檚 an outlook that requires customer service reps to regard every phone call as a chance to help a fellow human, and it鈥檚 what makes scanning a tax return an act of love and justice, helping both individuals and the state get what they鈥檙e owed.
鈥淭he Pale King is saying that it鈥檚 possible to get past the monotony. We can choose to look at the workday, not as some dreary horror, but as an 颅adventure,鈥 says Dr. Cockfield. 鈥淲e can be 鈥榠nformation cowboys,鈥 to borrow Wallace鈥檚 term, rather than spinning cogs.鈥
It may be heroic to push through tedium and there may be beauty on the far side of boredom, but even Dr. Cockfield admits it鈥檚 not likely to get people excited about tax season.鈥
