From Rob Brunner’s review of The Pale King in the most recent Entertainment Weekly:
Wallace revels in the supposed inner workings of this secret world, relishing the mouthfeel of accounting insanity like “for ruling requests concerning the classification of an organization as a limited partnership where a corporation is the sole general partner, see Rev. Proc. 72-13, 1972-1 CB 735.”
Supposed? Secret? Insanity? I checked, and Revenue Procedure 72-13 is real. It can be found in volume 1972-1 of the IRS’s Cumulative Bulletin, on page 735. And its subject heading is “Conditions under which the Revenue Service will issue a ruling concerning classification of an organization as a limited partnership where a corporation is the sole general partner.” David Foster Wallace took his research, and his subjects, seriously.