The Broom of the System
by David Foster Wallace, Duke Riley · first published 1987
54% recommend38% neutral8% critical
Why HN recommends it
Wallace's first novel, a shorter and more approachable entry point than Infinite Jest, valued for its humor, memorable characters, and playful take on language and philosophy; a good first DFW read.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Lenore Beadsman, a 24-year-old telephone switchboard operator who gets caught in the middle of a Cleveland-based character drama. In Wallace's typically offbeat style, Lenore navigates three separate crises: her great-grandmother's escape from a nursing home, a neurotic boyfriend, and a suddenly vocal pet cockatiel. The controlling idea surrounding all of these crises is the use of words and symbols to define a person.
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…for anyone interested in the philosophical questions of mathematics. Shapiro writes clearly, concisely, and in a manner that is easy to read. The Liars' Club by Mary Karr: Pretty great but brutal. The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace: I really enjoyed it. It's ode to Wittgenstein and it helped me cope with a lot of questions that I felt after studying LW. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗I'm excited to be the first comment to recommend The Broom of the System. I picked it off the library shelf because I knew of David Foster Wallace, but didn't think I had the stamina to go for Infinite Jest at the time. It's much, much shorter than Infinite Jest, and is a…
on “A Brand New Interview with David Foster Wallace” ↗…obsessed with "Hamlet" as a teen. That said it's a serious modern novel and while it contains a lot of very funny parts it's also at times difficult. If you like David Foster Wallace his other two novels "Broom of the system" and "The Pale King" are also great. The Pale King was left unfinished when he died and was completed (from various drafts and notes) as a labour of love and respect from his notes by his editor. It's…
on “I got dysentery in a human challenge trial” ↗Reading this makes me feel quite insecure in my own comprehension of these books. I've read Pale King, Infinite Jest, Consider the Lobster, and Broom of the System. I liked them all. But I read this article and I don't really understand the majority of it, which makes me think that I also missed a lot of what I was supposed to take from the books. Genuine question,…
on “David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral” ↗Man, I wish he would have written another epic work of fiction before he died. So sad. I loved Infinite Jest and Broom of the System.
on “Growing Sentences with David Foster Wallace” ↗…(about postmodernism, irony and the whole clique of people around Brett Easton Ellis) are both outstanding. For novels, he only wrote 3 (as far as I know) and they're really great. I personally read "Broom of the System" first because I like reading things in order (I've done this with a number of other authors I like). It's a really cool book, very funny and not quite as huge a commitment as "Infinite Jest". So don't…
on “A Brand New Interview with David Foster Wallace” ↗The Broom of the System was the first DFW I read. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The ending was a little lackluster, actually the overall story was a little lackluster; But the humor and characters make up for that. I smile every…
on “A Brand New Interview with David Foster Wallace” ↗…collection of short stories and a nice way to get introduced to Wallace without having to go whole hog into something like Infinite Jest. That being said, I also very much enjoyed his first novel, The Broom of the System. It’s an easier read than Infinite Jest. I don’t think it’s as good as IJ, but it’s definitely got a lower barrier to entry.
on “David Foster Wallace’s Pen Pal” ↗It’s really not. But my suggestion is read some of his journalism (eg “A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again” or “Getting away from already being pretty much away from it all”) or his first novel “Broom of the system” and if you like that, you’ll probably like “Infinite Jest”). He’s also written some really thoughtful literary criticism if you like that sort of thing (“Fictional futures and the conspicuously young”…
on “The Great Gatsby is the most misunderstood novel” ↗I really need to start being more fictional. Maybe I'll read Broom of the System again.
on “Humanoid robots can’t outsource their brains to the cloud due to network latency” ↗After this video, I finally got the joke involving Great Ohio Desert (artificial desert that was intended to be landmark of Ohio) from Wallace's 1987 "Broom of The System". Maybe it even inspired his idea with catapulting trash to Canada in his "Inifinte Jest".
on “The Doomed Cleveland Balloonfest of 1986 [video]” ↗Dear Neal Stephenson: thanks for actually ending your well-thunk writings with complete sentences/thoughts. ---- I just finished Dave Wallace's 520 page PhD thesis, his first novel The Broom of the System, which literally ends with a liar proclaiming: >I am a man of my ( "word" is presumed to follow, but another DFW book which just [abruptly!?!] ends ) Like his other two novels (Infinite Jest & Pale…
on “A Remarkable Assertion from A16Z” ↗…the former declaring him to have "no discernible talent." It feels terribly one-sided to mention only the stack of positive reviews. IJ was by no means a universal critical success. > ... both [The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest], most importantly, work up an elaborate – and elaborately digressive – plot which deliberately ends as unsatisfactorily as possible. While I can't speak for Broom. which I didn't finish,…
on “Well, duh (1996)” ↗FD and Pynchon share that title from what I remember from Every Love Story is a Ghost Story. Pynchon's V. inspired DFW to write his first novel, The Broom of the System.
on ““The Depressed Person” by David Foster Wallace (1998) [pdf]” ↗…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americana_(novel) Haddon's breakthrough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curious_Incident_of_the_Do... DFW's breakthrough (maybe pushing it on "short" though) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Broom_of_the_System Ludwig still the reigning champ of short/difficult: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus
on “Short Little Difficult Books” ↗