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Title: The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace, Robert Boswell, Gerald Howard, William Kennick, Bonnie Nadell, Andrew Parker, Dale Peterson ISBN: 0-14-200242-9 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 25 May, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (33 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: fast, cheap, and out of control
Comment: Funny, clever as hell, and a little bit precious, "The Broom of the System" is an examination of our postmodern culture from the inside out. Wallace looks at the cultural artifacts of our world, explodes them, and reassembles the pieces to create a kind of narrative arc from the chaotic blizzard of information - it's like watching cable TV, only everything means something, and adds up to some larger purpose. And if Wallace weren't such a teriffic writer, the thing wouldn't hold together; he is, though, and it does, and while there's a lot of intellectual depth to the work, it's also a ton of fun to read, funny and affecting, and Wallace's prose is some kind of inspiration, giving us, as someone said somewhere, THE literary voice of this decade (a feat all the more impressive given that the book came out in '87). It's not a flawless book: Wallce tends to go overboard and get a little self-congratulatory, and the thing isn't quite as focused as his later "Infinite Jest" (an even better novel, though more difficult), but it's more than made up for by the sheer innovation of the book. It may even be a metafictive dissection of the state of metafiction - it's that good, and it bears out that level of thought.
Rating: 5
Summary: I envy those who will soon read it for the first time
Comment: While it's very easy to lump DFW in with other over-hyped, under talented 20-something writers, it is also completely inaccurate. He is in a class by himself. "Broom" remains his finest effort to date, and it's a good audition for any reader considering the commitment that is 'Infinite Jest." It's intelligent and intriguing, as well as drop dead funny. He's trying to do a lot in this book, and I think he succedes on every level. Just don't expect the conventional (i.e. neatly wrapped up 'plots,' familiar character types, linear structure), and you won't be disappointed. I think in the future we will look back on this novel as the debut of the most gifted and important writers of his time.
Rating: 3
Summary: Lovely piece of Meta-David
Comment: Curious and wonderful to see what someone as (obviously insane?) as DFW did back when he was still in a grad program for creative writing -- back when he was just a cunning tyke of 26, before (presumably) the MacArthur Fellowship had given him an oversized novelty cheque just for being really really smart --- before he started writing 1100 page behemoths and incalculably inscrutable short stories. Broom Of The System is, in a way, as straightforward a narrative as DFW ever has written (although there are plenty of POV shifts and a huge, steaming plate of metafictional story-on-story action)... It is a jumping off point, certainly, and you can see some of his fabulous textual obsessions of later books (fathers and dysfunctional families and drugs and addictions) in their earlier forms, here. DFW is to fiction what the band Rush was to music: he is a prog-rock artist, switching POVs and the like with a merciless disregard for tradition, and it's probably best to view his work-- esp. something like Infinite Jest -- as experiments, and not "stories." But with Broom of the System you get a little bit of both -- the first chapter in particular, I think, is one of the most flat-out charming bits of DFW's that I've read.
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Title: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries) by Stephen Burn ISBN: 082641477X Publisher: Continuum Pub Group Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (Great Discoveries) by David Foster Wallace ISBN: 0393003388 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Oblivion : Stories by David Foster Wallace ISBN: 0316919810 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 08 June, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Infinite Jest: A Novel by David Foster Wallace ISBN: 0316921173 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Girl With Curious Hair (Norton Paperback Fiction) by David Foster Wallace ISBN: 0393313964 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: March, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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