The Broom of the System: A Novel

Written by:
David Foster Wallace
Narrated by:
Robert Petkoff

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
14
Narrator
1
Release Date
June 2010
Duration
16 hours 28 minutes
Summary
The 'dazzling, exhilarating' (San Francisco Chronicle) debut novel from the bestselling author of Infinite Jest, available for the first time as an audiobook.

At the center of The Broom of the System is the betwitching (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.

Fiercely intelligent and entertaining, this debut novel from one of the most innovative writers of our generation explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.
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Reviews
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Dave Noyes

Really amazing, I find his writing more fulfilling when I read it myself, but simply don't have the time. Great story told by a talented narrator.

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Anonymous

Not for everyone, but this reader/listener got caught up in the humor. A meditation on the unsettling capacity of stories to create personhood in characters. Does with words what Art Spiegelman and his colleagues did visually in the Read Yourself Raw series - especially reminiscent of Marc Beyer's work in the Amy and Jordan comics.

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