The Broom of the System (edition 1997)

I started this electronically but the OCR sucks and then so* it must wait for paper. I noticed a few glitches, like hyphens for en-dashes and printer's quotes that faced the wrong way, then reached my limit when a (1981) college student had a Joumey poster on her wall.

* I'll miss you, DFW.

Taking forever to read. Totally unmotivated to finish it. ( )

DFW's first novel. All of his trademarks are there, the multilayered plot/writing style, the fact that the author is playing with language and that he is more than capable of making it do anything he so desires, but I am also picking up almost a youthful enthusiasm from it, as though the author is eager to write all of this down. A stark contrast to the titanic and belabored Infinite Jest, or the resignation one can pick up from The Pale King.

The idea that this book is one of his best is still contentious. But it is a damn good book all the same. ( )

I'm three books into the [[David Foster Wallace]] adventure, one book of short stories and [Infinite Jest] and feel tongue-tied and inadequate. The sheer inventive playfulness (or is it playful inventiveness?) on display, the compassion for suffering, and the wisdom..... is once again stunning. As I listened, I kept thinking, "Where did he come UP with That idea?" over and over again. The novel qua novel, his first, is arguably a bit of a mess and Wallace laughingly exits mid-word at the end, but the plot such as it is, centers around the (sexual) 'awakening' of Lenore Beadsman, daughter of a Cleveland baby-food tycoon (and mean bastard), presently involved with her boss, an eccentric and insecure publisher and considerably older man (40's to her 20's) named Rick Vigorous. Her father is about to introduce a new babyfood that gets infants talking early when Lenore's domineering great-grandma Lenore disappears from the nursing home with the formula --- which event has a domino effect from operation of the publisher's switchboard to a strange transformation of Vlad the Impaler, Lenore's cockatiel (who clearly has imbibed the baby food) who then finds himself on TV as an evangelist spokesbird .... and...... and.... you get the idea. There is no central theme either, not really. For awhile there is this hint that all of the events are part of a 'conspiracy' to awaken Lenore into adulthood, into herself and maybe so, only in the sense that it is cosmically 'time' for that to happen to her, so you think, hmmm maybe there is this almost feminist element (in the softer sense of the word) to bring a young woman into full ownership of her own life and body, to emerge out of the vague innocent sweetness of the 'kore' figure into the knowing adult woman.... but then there is more than a little of religious imagery as well, a strong implication (by way of Vlad) of the connection between Life, lived to the raunchy sexy hilt, and Life lived in 'partnership' with God - with immanence, being present, and being involved with others..... Wallace was smart and thoughtful and it's unwise to dismiss anything he puts into his work without careful examination. Which means, eventually, if I live long enough rereading all of his work, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. The four and a half is to leave room at the top for the five that is [Infinite Jest].

I thought the narrator of the audiobook was superb. His Vlad was GREAT! ( )

Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman’s great Grandmother has disappeared along with twenty five other elderly residents from a nursing home, leaving her confused and bewildered, I would even go as far as to say she was extremely discombobulated and emotionally stranded on the edge of G.O.D (Great Ohio Desert). This sets her out on a course to find her great grand mother, a women who had an enormous influence on her life & who herself had been a student of Wittgenstein & had brought up Lenore to believe that words create reality, that ''All that really exists of life is what can be said about it.'' leaving Lenore convinced that she has no real control of her life. Would that this were her only problem, no this is just an addition to her world, her pet cockatiel - Vlad the Impaler - has started speaking, and is now a TV star on some evangelical channel, a brother known as The Antichrist. Yet this is still only the pointiest tip of some giant iceberg, she has an on-going relationship with her boss Rick, vigorous part owner of the publishing firm of Frequent & Vigorous, a man who is so obsessed about her, but cannot rise to the occasion when he’s with her, telling her stories as a substitute for sex.

“Has it occurred to you that the “Road Runner” is what might be aptly termed an existential program? ……..I invite you to realize that this program does nothing other than present us with a protagonist, a coyote, functioning within a system interestingly characterized as a malevolent Nature, a protagonist who endlessly, tirelessly, disastrously pursues a thing, a telos --- the Bird in the title role --- a thing, a goal far, far less valuable than the effort and resources the protagonist puts into the pursuit” Fieldbinder grinned wryly “ The thing pursued --- a skinny meatless bird --- is far less valuable than the energy and attention and economic resources expended by the coyote on the process of pursuit. Just as an attachment radiating from the self outward is worth far less than the price the establishment of such an attachment inevitably exacts.”…….

A question Doctor.. “Why doesn’t the coyote take the money he spends on bird costumes and catapults and radioactive Road Runner food pellets and explosive missiles and simply go eat Chinese?…..”

The piece quoted above, comes from a section titled an “idea for Fieldbinder collection” and is one of the tales threaded through Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman’s story. Which leads us to the heart of Broom of the System, this is a book about words and language, it’s obsessions are about communication whether with others, or with ourselves, with storytelling, with the art of storytelling etc., and again I’m just scratching the surface of the themes paraded, derided, held up for examination, held up, then shot down, laughed out, laughed with. This book is like “V” by Thomas Pynchon, or “If on a winters night a traveller” by Italo Calvino, half the fun of this book is in what the writer will do next and can he pull it off, and like the mentioned writers David Foster Wallace is not merely a tight-rope walker, he foregoes the rope as an unnecessary aid, or uses it as though it were a skipping rope, and you watch, and you watch, and you watch, wondering how he does it, wondering how he’s going to bring all the disparate strands, all the stories within stories, all the psychiatric transcripts, all the characters & their own tales together, and yet he does. By the £$£%(())*&^tr5 he does, in a way that is wonderful, bizarre, outlandish, bawdy, hilarious, fantastically inventive and just really funny.

http://parrishlantern.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/broom-of-system.html ( )