The Broom of the System

Literary fiction · Absurdism · Comedy · Satire

First published: 1987
Print length: 467 pagesPenguin Books, 2004

Description

Lenore Beadsman is a twenty-four-year-old Cleveland telephone operator whose sense of self is already unstable when her great-grandmother vanishes from a nursing home. The disappearance draws Lenore into a widening tangle involving her possessive boyfriend and employer, Rick Vigorous, a pet cockatiel that begins speaking with alarming fluency, and relatives and professionals determined to explain her life for her. As Lenore worries that she may exist only as a character in other people’s stories, language itself becomes both evidence and trap. Television segments, therapy transcripts, conversations, and a manuscript embedded within the novel repeatedly interrupt the plot. The Broom of the System turns romantic and family disorder into a comic, formally restless inquiry into whether words express identity or manufacture it.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Dialogue-driven · Experimental · Fragmentary · Witty

Pace

Variable

Tone

Absurdist · Cerebral · Humorous · Unsettling

Structure

Fragmented · Framed

Focus

Character · Ideas · Voice

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 4 / 5
Ideas: 5 / 5
Structure: 5 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

FamilyIdentityKnowledge and truthPower

About David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace was an American novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and professor, best known for Infinite Jest. His work moves between dense, formally experimental fiction and nonfiction that can sound conversational even as it develops intricate arguments. Long, branching sentences, specialized or invented language, shifting voices, and disruptive footnotes are central to his method; he described the notes as a way to interrupt linear narrative while preserving readability and reflecting the texture of experience. Across fiction and essays, Wallace examined entertainment, appetite, self-consciousness, and the habits of irony in a media-saturated culture, returning to the difficulty of sincere communication and the fear of being alone. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster turn cruises, fairs, politics, usage disputes, and public spectacles into comic, morally alert scrutiny. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men uses omissions, fragments, and compromised speakers to probe sexual power and self-deception. What distinguishes Wallace is the pressure he puts on form itself, making digression and excess serve sustained attention to other minds.