The Broom of the System: A Novel

David Foster Wallace

Jan 2027 · Sold by Little, Brown

Ebook

480

Pages

Eligible

This book will become available on January 12, 2027. You will not be charged until it is released.

About this ebook

“Daring, hilarious ... a zany picaresque adventure of contemporary America run amok.” —New York Times

At the center of The Broom of the System is the bewitching—and also bewildered—heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio, which sits on the edge of a suburban wasteland: the Great Ohio Desert. Lenore works as a switchboard attendant at a publishing firm, and in addition to her mind-numbing job, she has a few other problems. Her great-grandmother, a one-time student of Wittgenstein, has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau (and boss), editor-in-chief Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous. And her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psychobabble, Auden, and the King James Bible, which may propel him to stardom on a Christian fundamentalist television program.

This debut novel from one of the most innovative writers of our generation is fiercely intelligent and wildly entertaining.

The remarkable debut novel from the bestselling author of Infinite Jest explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality. First published in 1987, now available in a brand-new paperback edition. “Daring, hilarious ... a zany picaresque adventure of contemporary America run amok.” —Ne...

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About the author

David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1962 and raised in Illinois, where he was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He received bachelor of arts degrees in philosophy and English from Amherst College and wrote what would become his first novel, The Broom of the System, as his senior English thesis. He received a masters of fine arts from University of Arizona in 1987 and briefly pursued graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University. His second novel, Infinite Jest, was published in 1996. Wallace taught creative writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College, and published the story collections Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion, the essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and Consider the Lobster. He was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers' Award, and was appointed to the Usage Panel for The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. He died in 2008. His last novel, The Pale King, was published in 2011.

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