The Broom of the System

Rating:
Summary: The precursor to Infinite Jest
Review: This book will keep you laughing and baffled at its absurdities. From Vlad the Impaler (a talking cockatiel with hyper-stimulated speech) to Norman Bombardini (a Cleveland mogul trying to grow infinitely large) to LaVache Beadsman (a super-genius junkie with one leg). The plot begins with Lenore Beadsman's cold-blooded great-grandmother disappearing with an entire crew of geriatric misfits. It only gets weirder. This book is not Infinite Jest, but it's sure as hell entertaining. One reviewer said that this book is a mediocre attempt at trying to be Pynchon, Gaddis, Gass, et all. I disagree. What I see here is a young writer (I think Wallace was in his late twenties at the time) having some irrevrant fun. I had a blast reading it. It is not the type of book you will be banging your head against the wall because of. It is simply non-linear goodness from one of America's greatest imaginations. I found it fitting that Wallace pays tribute to Barthalme (one of his biggest influences) with the character Candy Mandible. All in all, not brain-busting metafiction, but a fine surreal diversion.

Rating:
Summary: I Read "Infinite Jest", Should I Read This Too?
Review: Well, did you like "Infinite Jest"? If so, then yes. "Broom of the System" may not be more of the same, but it's at least less of the same: shorter and less convoluted but with a similar meandering structure and Douglas-Adams-as-grad-student sensibility. "The Broom of the System" is a solid piece of highbrow comedy that stands on its own, though it's hard for "Infinite Jest" fans not to approach it as a warmup. Here's where DFW takes his first crack at many of the themes that wind up in Infinite Book: the (I guess unsurprising) obsession with prodigies, particularly adolescent males who do well in school, the fearless embrace of pretension, and a weakness for glib patter that nicely sets off the occasional jab of sincerity that manages to peek through. The prose is loopy, though more conventionally so. DFW had not yet worked out the collision of stoner-speak and dissertationese that gave "Infinite Jest" its distinctive voice, but the seeds are there. Even plotwise there are echoes: like "Infinite Jest", "Broom of the System" ends in medias res, and it's interesting to see version 1.0 of this neat trick. BotS may not be a re-reader, but it's definitely a reader, and an enjoyable one, assuming you like this sort of thing.

And if you don't? Specifically, what if you disliked "Infinite Jest"? Then the question becomes: how much did you dislike "Infinite Jest"? Say you found it annoying from the word go, think DFW is an insufferable smartypants, and hurled (or more like shotputted) the book across the room soon after the chapter that begins "Where was the woman who said she'd come. She said she would come" and continues in that vein for a good ten pages? Well, obviously you're going to hate "Broom of the System" too. If you're more of a middling Wallace non-fan, however, someone who finds him pretty good but too self-indulgent, made it about halfway through IJ, and can chuckle good naturedly at the Onion headline "Girlfriend Stops Reading David Foster Wallace Breakup Letter At Page 20", then BotS might be for you. It's DFW before he had developed either the courage or the inclination to go completely nuts. And there's not a footnote in sight.

Rating:
Summary: Deliriously inventive, more accessible than "Infinite Jest"
Review: When I was in my early twenties, I read a lot of works by emerging young writers like Jay McInerney, Bret Ellis, and others. Looking back on it now, it seems unfair to put David Foster Wallace in the same category as those writers, as he is far more talented and imaginative.

"The Broom of the System" is Wallace's debut, and like most first-borns, it received the most love and attention. It's more accessible than "Infinite Jest" and can be read more easily in smaller chunks without having to figure out, for example, when the events being narrated actually took place.

There isn't much of a plot in "Broom," which is remarkable when one considers that the novel runs over 500 pages. Loosely speaking, it's about the travails of Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman, a 24 year old woman who works as a telephone switch operator for a magazine edited by her lover, Rick Vigorous, who is anything but. Her grandmother (also named Lenore) has disappeared from her nursing home, and Lenore is the only one who seems worried. But that's only a fraction of what the book is about.

It's full of stories within stories, some the sad submissions that Vigorous derides (but that are far better than his limp and self-indulgent attempts at writing), others little asides that seem irrelevant but aren't. Mostly, "Broom" is an exploration of language and ideas -- some chapters involve highly detailed descriptions of, for example, the Goldberg-like trail of a pebble; other chapters are entirely dialogue, with no description of who is speaking (but which is clear from context).

In other words, this is not a novel about sex and drugs (although there are sex and drugs), and it's not a shallow, Gen-Ex picture of excess. The nearest comparison I can think of, in a loose way, is Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon."