| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday, March 28, 2017 | 4:00PM - 5:30PM | Seminar Room 208N, Munk School of Global Affairs 1 Devonshire Place M5S 3K7 |
CSUS and F. Ross Johnson Distinguished Speaker Series
In 1997-98, David Foster Wallace took three accounting classes at Illinois State University as part of the research for what became The Pale King, his posthumously published, unfinished novel about IRS accountants. His notes for these classes include, in block capitals, the statement “ACCOUNTANTS ARE COWBOYS OF INFORMATION.” This talk draws on archival research at the Harry Ransom Center (at the University of Texas at Austin), arguing that The Pale King is not only a book about “cowboys of information” at the Peoria IRS Regional Center; it is also a book that required its author and its editor—as well as its readers—to act as cowboys of information, corralling a large and increasingly unwieldy body of data into something meaningful.
Philip Sayers is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Toronto, and a Junior Fellow at Massey College. He holds a BA in English from Cambridge and an MA in Comparative Literature from University College London, and specializes in twentieth century and contemporary Anglophone prose, psychoanalysis, and continental philosophy.
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