Gramma Lenore (grammar Lenore lost Lenore) is a former pupil of Wittgenstein, a conceit that allows Wallace to run wild with his own philosophical-linguistic concerns. The Broom audiobook features the considerable talents of reader Robert Petkoff, who brings life to its many characters like protagonist Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman, a switchboard operator looking for her grandmother (and namesake) in the weird nooks and crannies of Wallace’s fictional Cleveland. Hatchette Audio’s new audiobook version of Broom highlights the strength of Wallace’s dialogue, a feature of his writing perhaps overlooked, or at least overshadowed, by his complex diction and syntax and his innovative narrative structures. Is our meaning in life tied to our ability to be useful? Are we bigger than our own personal stories? Are we in control of our lives or is a higher power? Are our efforts to change our future futile? This journey is one of satisfying intellectual introspection, one that will leave people laughing but also grieving over an ending that could only be the irony of David Foster Wallace.David Foster Wallace’s first novel The Broom of the System obsesses over language, words, storytelling and what it might mean to have our lives circumscribed in another person’s narrative. On the whole, "Broom" is more of an experience than a novel, an exploration of our purpose as living things. "The Broom of the System" is organized in such a way that the audience continuously builds a sense of climax as they piece together the sequence-only to get cut off, quite literally.
While at first the lack of DFW’s chronology may seem confusing, as the reader progresses it becomes clear the chapters are placed with quite amount of precision. Therefore, it is through these subplots and side rants that the main problems of the story seem to close together after a few chapters of seeming completely unrelated. For example, Lenore’s first bout of an existential crisis comes from a story Vigorous tells her where the author kills off each character despite how hard they tried for a happy ending. The nearly five-hundred page novel goes into depth about their thoughts on love, life, and relationships while also bringing in side-stories explained as submissions to Vigorous’ magazine which reflect the character’s true motives. Together the characters bounce philosophies off each other which add to the overall feeling of wandering through words.
#The broom of the system how to#
Even her pet, a cockatiel bird, understands the power of words when one day he suddenly learns how to speak. She places a careful emphasis on words and ideas thanks to her cryptic, MIA grandmother and her boss/lover Rick Vigorous who works as a literary magazine editor. Her character serves to explore the power of language. During this time, he described that his real crisis shifted from “a fear that he was a 98.6☏ calculating machine to a fear that he was nothing but a linguistic construct.”īeadsman’s purpose extends farther than metafiction, however.
Her feeling that someone-like an author-is controlling her seems laughable and ironic on the outside, but mirrors the mindset Wallace said he experienced while writing this novel as his undergraduate thesis. "The Broom of the System" features a very interesting cast of characters, all of whom revolve around Lenore Beadsman, a girl whose existential crisis is the fear that she’s just a character in a book.
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