April 15. Books to make Tax Day entertaining
Instead of reading books about how to pay or avoid our taxes, let’s take a look at books where taxes, taxpayers, or tax collectors figure prominently.
First, The Guardian magazine has a great "Tax in Literature Quiz" that they published 12 years ago. How many can you get right?
Patricia C. Wrede has an interesting post about Taxes in Fiction.
Books to consider:
Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man's Tour of Duty Inside the IRS by Richard Yancey. This 2004 memoir follows one man who goes from unemployed to having power he can wield over others as a field agent for the IRS.
The Pale King, by David Foster Wallace. Was an unfinished novel set in the fictional Peoria, Illinois regional examination center of the IRS. Set in 1985, pieces of the manuscript were found after Wallace’s passing in 2008,. Michael Pietsch, his editor for his critically acclaimed Infinite Jest, assembled the notes and chapters into The Pale King.
The Hair Carpet Weaver by Andreas Eschbach is not so much about taxes but about the life work of every family on a far away planet that revolves around what each person and the planet, owes to another. Taxes? Maybe, maybe not, but this brilliant book about a seemingly impossible livelihood ends with a devasting truth … about why they weave. SMB Review, The Hair Carpet Weaver