Entertainment For Lively Minds
The Broom of the System
Posted by StarvinMarvin on 27 October 2011 - 1:46pm.
It's About:
A woman (unusual in Wallace) named Lenore, her family, her job - strange corporate types, receptionists, sales & marketing reps, and R&D people (basically your typical office environment)- religion, politics, sex, the act of writing and critiquing, Wittgenstein, a talking pet bird... How do you describe what ANY book by this man is actually about. And does it matter? It's not about the what; it's about the how.
Length of read:
Medium
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Other David Foster Wallace texts (imagine Infinite Jest without the endless footnotes), and any book with dialogue that reads like people actually speak, intelligent writing that doesn't beat you over the head with conclusions to be drawn, allowing you to just take it all in.
One thing you've learned:
Quite a lot: (1) That I'm going to miss his writing, (2) that stories don't have to have neat, tied-up endings to be compelling, and (3)that when I read DFW I want to read him again. It's like a holiday you've enjoyed though you're not sure where you've been. And, like said holiday, the images and scenes stick in your mind for some time.
