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List Price: $16.00
Our Price: $10.37
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Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780142002421
ISBN: 0142002429
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 480
Publication Date: 2004-05-25
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Release Date: 2004-05-25
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Editorial Reviews:
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Published when Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenore’s great-grandmother has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau, and boss, Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous, and her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psycho- babble, Auden, and the King James Bible. Ingenious and entertaining, this debut from one of the most innovative writers of his generation brilliantly explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.
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Customer Rating:
Summary: not great, not bad
Comment: the stories within the story are more enjoyable than the main plot itself.
most of the characters were interesting as was their interconnectedness, but some seemed unnecessary almost as if they were thrown in just as a distraction. just when something potentially exciting was on the verge of happening, the perspective would switch and by the time that particular dialog wrapped up, the impending thrill of the previous section was long gone. despite the attention-draining subplots, d.f.w.'s genius imagination and humor make this worth reading.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This book was terrible enough for me to write a review on it.
Comment: The Broom of the System left me sad, angry, and a little more than confused. Any book capable of drawing such strong emotions in me is worth more than one star, which is why I gave it two. Beautiful writing and language that leads from nothing to nowhere in a somewhat hefty 467 pages.
They cheat and lie in too many ways and are all products of misunderstanding.
This entire book is a big misunderstanding, I highly recommend against it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Manically and Explosively Funny!
Comment: David's early book titles apparently have little to do with the subject matter, much like a song from REM, whose lyrics have nothing to do with anything at all, other than they sound good. Don't expect to learn what is 'The Broom of the System' by reading this book.
What you should expect is a Douglas-Adams like treatment of the near future, full of quintessential midwestern humor (David is from Urbana, Illinois), which consists mainly of Satire, Irony, and Social Comment. These are his major strengths. They are brilliantly displayed every so often in a 3-20 page satirical rant or manic expository piece.
If you want an example of his brilliance, search inside this book for 'vanity' and read what it says. This book-within-a-book - only 3 pages long, and starting on page 20 - will "up" your reading speed and have you laughing and crying before you finish the narrative. And you may also be wondering "is that me? what if this were me? what would i do ??"
David's brilliance at the 3-20 page narrative does not extend, unfortunately, to the 480 page novel. And so, while there are individual pieces of this book that are brilliant, absolutely hysterical 'laughing out loud and crying at the same time', you will probably enjoy the overall plotline less than the individual components of the book.
But this is still an excellent read, well worth your time and effort.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I prefer his essays
Comment: David Foster Wallace is one of my favorite non-fiction authors, so I decided to read his first novel, The Broom of the System. I'd love to be able to explain the title, but I can't; I have no idea what it refers to. Ditto for most of the book's themes, characters, motifs, and its plot. It was beautifully written at times; Wallace has a real flair for dialogue as well as the same descriptive zing that makes me enjoy his essays, but since it was "Picaresque," according to the blurbs on the cover, the storyline jumped all over the place, often from page to page. Which wouldn't have bothered me too much, except most of the story lines don't end.
It seemed to me that the whole novel has no point: though it comes to a climax, the ending is very nearly on the next page, and since the characters are ambiguous and conflicted (Their most realistic traits) it is impossible to say what the final effects of the climax are, or why the characters make the choices they did. It felt to me like the author had a very distinct concept of what effect he wanted to have on the reader, and he put everything he had into creating that effect; unfortunately, he didn't focus enough on telling a good story while he was affecting me.
So I'll be sticking to Wallace's essays from now on. Though it's a shame, because judging by the incredibly convoluted and wacked out plot lines that this book follows (until they peter out in a puff of dust, that is) and the ones described in the stories-within-the-story, Wallace has a great flair for absurdist story telling. I sort of wish he'd come down a literary step or two and just write something wacky. It would be fun to read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Self indulgent twaddle
Comment: I am a fan of DFW - Infinite Jest is one of my favorite books, and I've loved even some of his weirder forays into metafiction in his collections of short works. I was very surprised and disappointed by this novel, in fact forced to set it aside 120 pages in. It's largely incomprehensible, far too cute styllistically, and makes no effort to orient the reader in the webs of its plot. There's one entertaining character, Mr Bombadini, but the rest is just mastur**tory. I don't need stories spoon-fed to me by any means, but the author in this case seemed to be aiming for cleverness first, to hell with the reader.
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