| Title | : | The Broom of the System |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0142002429 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780142002421 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 467 |
| Publication | : | First published January 6, 1987 |
The Broom of the System Reviews
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"I think I had kind of a mid-life crisis at twenty, which probably doesn't augur real well for my longevity. So what I did, I went back home for a term, planning to play solitaire and stare out the window, whatever you do in a crisis. And all of a sudden I found myself writing fiction."
It was 1986 and he was 24 years old when it was published. He began writing it fresh out of a fairly tumultuous mental health crisis at age 22 (or as he put it "a young 22") while simultaneously writing
a highly technical philosophy thesis at Amherst in order to graduate with a double major in philosophy and English. Regardless of any of its debut-novel flaws, these extra-textual facts should help to compel most who've read this unique, relentlessly funny and youthfully ambitious book.
To echo some basic points made quite often—no, it doesn't pack the same punch as Infinite Jest, of course—pretty much nothing does. Yes, it has some debut-novel flaws, but incredibly minor ones and ones that I can't really name specifically—there's just a vague sense of a sort of green incompleteness that's absent from his other work, the exact source of which is hard to pin down. It may just have something to do with the competition; Infinite Jest comparisons haven't been escapable since '96 and it simply dwarfs most books and not merely on a scale measured by pages or centimeters.
The book's harshest critic that I've encountered has been the author himself. In what is still
probably the single most impressive interview with a writer that I've ever read (and re-read too many times to count) the following rapidfire, seemingly annoyed, self-slagging paragraph spills out of a yet still youthful (c. 1993) Wallace six years after Broom was published:DFW: Think of The Broom of the System as the sensitive tale of a sensitive young WASP who’s just had this mid-life crisis that’s moved him from coldly cerebral analytic math to a coldly cerebral take on fiction and Austin-Wittgenstein-Derridean literary theory, which also shifted his existential dread from a fear that he was just a 98.6°F calculating machine to a fear that he was nothing but a linguistic construct. This WASP’s written a lot of straight humor, and loves gags, so he decides to write a coded autobio that’s also a funny little post-structural gag: so you get Lenore, a character in a story who’s terribly afraid that she’s really nothing more than a character in a story. And, sufficiently hidden under the sex-change and the gags and theoretical allusions, I got to write my sensitive little self-obsessed bildungsroman. The biggest cackle I got when the book came out was the way all the reviews, whether they stomped up and down on the overall book or not, all praised the fact that at least here was a first novel that wasn’t yet another sensitive little bildungsroman.
I disagree with the extent of his public, self-depricating take, but have a real soft spot for those helplessly under the spell of rigorous self-dissatisfaction, so we break even with a smile in my heart for ol' painfully self-conscious Dave. Plus, he just remains hilarious and entertaining even in these fits of seemingly unjustified or overly dismissive criticism.
As is natural with any writer who developes a unique voice and point of view, one can easily see this as the precursor to his later works. The seedlings are all there in plain view: thematically, stylistically, structurally. One might be tempted to call this something like Infinite Jest Jr. if it didn't sound like something only a totally unthoughtful or phony or lazy critic might say, but the connections can rather effortlessly be made, that's the point.
I actually think that this book is more consistently entertaining than his others. There are boring sections of Infinite Jest and The Pale King and anyone who says otherwise is a goddamn liar. But this book, to me, more or less has zero dips. It's also the most purely comedic novel of the three. There are some touching and intense scenes, but mostly I sense so much symbolic meaning behind much of the plot, action, dialogue and omniscient description that it's also his least harrowingly humane novel. This is all in comparison to two "
pants-crapping-awesome" (to borrow a Kowalskian phrase) novels, so take each assessment with a grain of salt.
And it just might be possible that perhaps one needs an interest in philosophy, psychology, linguistics or just a good ol' fashion liberal arts education for much of what I found funny to be seen as such, but nonetheless, this was my experience with it. So much of the "intellectual" content I took to be scathing satire of the failures of academia and largely influenced by the fact that he was still in college while writing this. All of the therapy scenes for instance, while simultaneously making some legitimately interesting points about human psychology, were just one long chuckle for me. Or the sort of mock-Lacanian, Self/Other stuff that Norman Bombardini pontificates about while stuffing his face and trying to become large enough to fill the universe. The introductory scene with this character had me laughing hysterically (hand over my mouth, high volume, zero control) on my bus ride to work one morning. I remember it fondly. Part of what's so funny about it is the same thing so many haterz find repulsive about books in the postmodern canon: a supposed lack of "realism." Why does everybody speak so unrealistically? would be the best way to sum up the charges. Wallace has a rather trademarked style of coupling baroque or academic language with slang and blunt utterances. This more often than not has a comedic effect, however, since it's used throughout a book so sub-textually concerned with language itself, it also makes for a beautiful pairing—styles and themes snugly juxtaposed, everything in its right place. To quote something further from the previously cited interview about "realism" that I think nails how I feel:DFW: Well, it depends whether you’re talking little-r realistic or big-R. If you mean is my stuff in the Howells/Wharton/Updike school of U.S. Realism, clearly not. But to me the whole binary of realistic vs. unrealistic fiction is a canonical distinction set up by people with a vested interest in the big-R tradition. A way to marginalize stuff that isn’t soothing and conservative. Even the goofiest avant-garde agenda, if it’s got integrity, is never, "Let’s eschew all realism," but more, "Let’s try to countenance and render real aspects of real experiences that have previously been excluded from art." The result often seems "unrealistic" to the big-R devotees because it’s not a recognizable part of the "ordinary experience" they’re used to countenancing.
Wallace goes on later in that interview to make some brilliant points about the need for fiction writing to have well-crafted elements that remind the reader that they're engaged in a form of communication with the author, which I think speaks to some complaints about the lack of variation or "realism" in the cast's ways of speaking in work such as Wallace's and other prime suspects like DeLillo et al. These points are also elegantly and cogently tied to the deeper ongoing agenda of his writing: to alleviate despair, loneliness, alienation, etc.
Some of my favorite parts of this book are when Rick Vigorous, editor at a quarterly lit-mag, recounts some of the short fiction submissions to his undeserved girlfriend (and the book's ostensible center of narrative gravity) Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The tales are told often as they lay in bed together at the end of the day. The submissions are commented on as not being very good or being too weird or too sad, but again I disagree with Wallace's/"Rick's" judgments here. It occurred to me that this may've been a way for Wallace to covertly sneak in some short story ideas he'd had but previously self-critically knocked down as being subpar, without having to put them out there as legitimate efforts. But it's also possible that he was just making fun of a kind of story writing that he saw fellow writers turning out that annoyed or otherwise displeased him. Or some combination of the two motives. Regardless, I really enjoyed all of them.
There are also layers of Wittgensteinian philosophy embedded in the thematic substrata of this book. I'll recommend
this (which I've read and enjoyed) and
this (which I haven't read yet but that I know has relevant essays in it) to those interested in seeing all the neat ways in which ideas about metaphysics and the nature of language and the written word are examined and promulgated in between the lines and occasionally are the lines.
Outside of these loftier sub-agendas there's really just a delicious bulk of hilarious, absurdist, and lovingly-detailed storytelling and world-building at the helm of this relatively stunning freshmen effort. I'd like to see a better novel written by a 22 year-old, but it seems pretty unlikely. Bring it on, whippersnappers.
____________________________________________
As I mention in my original non-review review-like thing from a few years ago, now seated a paragraph below and spared from deletion out of sentimentality: This was the last fictional work of Wallace's that I made my way to along my ravenous "Why helloooooo there, Mr. Wallace" readerly journey. It also just so happens to be the first book he ever published. Firsts and lasts and births and deaths. Get it? It felt meaningful and weighty at the time when I struggled to turn feelings into preserved keystrokes while feeling particularly sad about his all-too-final bow:
I find it fitting in a initially intuitive and deeply, personally meaningful way that the one DFW book I've yet to read is his novelistic beginning and is going to be read last by myself; considering the horrible events of September 12th, 2008; considering the nature of things beginning and ending; considering the near-constant ruminations on such things being heightened in new and more profound ways all of the time; considering that the successive passage of time implicitly involves more and more bearing witness to myriad beginnings and endings; considering my love for what I've come to understand The Author to "be" via his writing and talking; considering the ways in which we long to reverse the march of history, the fundamental law of entropy, the physical constant known to science as the rate of decay; considering that this dead man was once a little bit younger than myself when he officially kicked off what would be a body of work that will long surpass his own working body; considering, just considering... -
SECOND READING UPDATE
Decided to bump this up to 5 stars for the simple reason that I've now read it twice and generally any book I read more than once is one I call an outstanding read. More than that basic reasoning though, I really enjoy the playful language, the many puns, the clever juvenalia of the symbolism, and the gently mocking metafictional stories-within-stories. Also I've got a vested personal interest in anything pineal gland (Hail Eris!) which gland features significantly here as a jokey MacGuffin.
Beyond the fun, of which there is plenty, Wallace raises significant questions regarding language and whether and how it is always/only a proxy for experience. The many crises of Self vs Other, sometimes funny and sometimes distressing, are at the root of essentially all our real-world human interactions. The advanced-level tricks Wallace pulls off with everything are really impressive: sentences are cut off but we can still extrapolate their meaning, speakers aren't identified but we can still determine who is who enough to follow the conversations, holes are left in the plot but we can fill them in for ourselves... The form of the novel both models and becomes its function, which is really cool and a lot harder to pull off than would seem at first glance.
So, 5 stars - highly recommended to linguistic geeks and word nerds.
*
It feels weird calling DFW playful, but it's very hard not to get caught up in his linguistic acrobatics here. This is really good writing. It's a strange but effervescent balance of casual formality and rule-following goofiness. It also feels quite a lot sharper than Infinite Jest and The Pale King - like Wallace was writing with the intent to entertain first, edify second. Early enough in his craft that he was still eager to please, perhaps? Hadn't fully come into that pretentious image of the intellectually burdened artiste? Maybe.
This is an iffy time to be exploring DFW's wider works, here in the context of the #MeToo movement as allegations against him rise to the surface. Wallace is dead, so attacking or defending him specifically feels half-hearted; there are bigger (living) fish to fry. But Pandora's box is open and there's no escaping the questions that now darken his legacy: Can I still enjoy his writing? Large swathes of it speak to me personally. What does that mean? Should I worry about my own character? Because honestly I do worry about his, now. What does it say about me if I still read him, but don't like him, but do relate to him? Is it all as simple as "take what you want and leave the rest?"
I believe great art prompts deep reflection, and I have found that in reading this man's books.
4 stars, and certainly verging towards 5, but surpassed by his later work. -
Voi proceda, ca de obicei, ex abrupto...
Romanul lui Wallace are două personaje la fel de principale, editorul și prozatorul Rick Vigorous, care suferă de „anxietatea igienei”, și Lenore Beadsman, telefonistă la o firmă (dar fiică de magnat), care suferă și ea de „anxietatea igienei”. Lenore Beadsman e nepoata lui Lenore Beadsman (sic!), cea care l-a audiat pe (și a fost fascinată de) Ludwig Wittgenstein, în anii 20 ai secolului XX. Acțiunea romanului se petrece în 1990.
Lenore Beadsman și Rick Vigorous consultă același terapeut, doctorul Curtis Jay. S-au cunoscut, de altfel, la cabinetul lui (unul ieșea, altul intra și invers), Rick s-a îndrăgostit instantaneu de Lenore, dar Lenore, gingaș spus, s-a purtat ca o ingrată. Sigur, Lenore nu e o frumusețe, dar e chipeșă. Vigorous nu este nici el o frumusețe, e trist și inhibat, crede că are un „penis monstruos de mic” (p.169), cel mai mic penis din univers (și Montaigne a suferit de această obsesie generală), dar are un talent formidabil de a compune povestiri tîmpite, atît de tîmpite încît mori de rîs cînd le citești și e nevoie să fii resuscitat (cf. pp.131-142, 222-238, 376-389 etc.).
Am menționat că Lenore Beadsman e nepoata lui Lenore Beadsman. Străbunica locuiește în azilul Shaker Heights, unde se simte excelent și construiește „antinomii”. Într-una din zile, Lenore Beadsman primește un telefon de la doctorul David Bloemker (directorul azilului) și află că Lenore Beadsman a dispărut împreună cu încă 19 „rezidenți” și 4 medici (p.67). Lenore Beadsman, tînăra, pornește în căutarea lui Lenore Beadsman, bătrîna. Romanul lui David Foster Wallace pare a ilustra vechiul motiv al căutării (queste). Din păcate, căutarea nu e suficient de minuțioasă și bătrîna Lenore Beadsman rămîne pînă la sfîrșitul romanului pierdută în negurile unui joc de limbaj wittgensteinian. Nu vom afla niciodată dacă mai trăiește au ba...
Romanul lui David Foster Wallace e o parodie metaficțională. Acțiunea e minimă. Ea este doar un prilej pentru prozator de a arăta cît de bine stăpînește figurile de stil și, adeseori, cît e de isteț. Mătura... mi-a amintit îndeosebi de Strigarea lotului 49 de Thomas Pynchon. Așadar, romanul lui Wallace nu are o intrigă liniară, se compune din bucăți (transcrieri ale unor ședințe la psihanalist, narațiuni absurde, conversații la telefon, din care nu se pricepe mare lucru, polemici metafizice etc.). Personajele discută adesea subțirimi conceptuale, inspirate de filosoful austriac: „un om nu este decît ceea ce poate fi spus despre el” (p.148-149). În concluzie, omul nu există în afara rostirii celorlalți. Viața e o poveste și, la limită, un joc de limbaj, din care nu putem evada. În fond, și moartea e tot un joc de limbaj.
Către sfîrșitul romanului, întîlnim și o scenă inițiatică. Andrew Lang (zis și Wang-Dang Lang) încearcă să profite de inocența sărmanei Lenore Beadsman (cea tînără, firește). Lenore are de ales între păcat, virtute și sinucidere. Rezistă eroic de la p.470 pînă la p.499. Dar la p.500 se predă. Rick Vigorous bănuiește că a fost trădat și e cuprins de melancolie. Speră, totuși, că Lenore își va da seama că a greșit.
David Foster Wallace a prezentat Mătura sistemului ca teză de Master. Avea 24 de ani, studiase Filosofie și English și dorea să țină un curs de creative writing. Dorința i s-a împlinit, dar asta nu l-a ajutat să scape de crizele de depresie. Nici succesul imens cu Infinite Jest nu i-a adus liniștea. În 12 septembrie 2008, s-a sinucis... -
PORTRAIT OF AN INFINITE JESTER AS A YOUNG MAN
You will see it. A dream dreamt and a dream realized. With this book, my small journey is complete (in a way) and I witnessed (in a small way) what went in the making of Infinite Jest. Let me draw the conclusion in broad brushstrokes. The Broom of the System + Girl with Curious Hair is NOT equal to Infinite Jest but a jest that was beginning to take shape in a mind, which in my eyes was capable of achieving anything. What David wanted to do was crack. A Joke. He did it. With a Big Explosion. And this is where it all began, at least for us readers. As always, it’s hard to define his books and Broom is no different. It has Wallace’s favorite props - A dysfunctional family, communication gaps, personal daddies, tunnels, distant future and Transcripts. For a moment if we forget that this was his debut novel, that he was just a 24 going on 25 graduate student when this book came out, it doesn’t take away anything from the fact that this book is an example of fiction writing at its best. It’s not flawless but happily rejoices in its imperfection and dance to the rhythm of words. Although it’s a work of a young man, the portrait it presents us with is an endearing one, where we become audience to the building of a road that leads to infinity.
WALLACE, WITTGENSTEIN AND WORDS
This is not a bad thing when I say that I indulge some books a lot more than others and when it comes to Wallace, I go out of my way in getting myself acquitted with his aspirations, inspirations and basic motives behind his each written word. I gave it 4 stars initially but now it’s a 5 star and deservedly so. I don’t read neat philosophies and different concepts ensued from them. I’m not an ideal candidate for it. I need analogies to understand certain things and that’s where writers like Wallace interest me. They are a medium for mounting and satiating curiosities and finally help in reaching a level of understanding about things I never really care for. Wittgenstein’s principles. Derrida’s theories of language. It was all Greek for me but when Wallace said this about The Broom of the System: the book can be viewed as a dialogue between Wittgenstein and Derrida, it was enough to intrigue me about these Gentlemen. This book is a hide n seek game and the object of desire is Gramma, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman, a former student of Ludwig Wittgenstein.…she studied classics and philosophy and who knows what else under a mad crackpot genius named Wittgenstein, who believed that everything was words. Really. If your car would not start, it was apparently to be understood as a language problem. If you were unable to love, you were lost in language. Being constipated equalled being clogged with linguistic sediment.
In this game, there are For and Against teams. For Team: Lenore Beadsman, Gramma’s great granddaughter. Same names and a lot of confusion. Against Team: Rick Vigorous, Lenore’s employer and an obsessive, possessive, lover. There’s a mediator/umpire too. A mad psychiatrist and the funniest of the lot (For the record, this book is mad funny). They all constitute the ‘system’ and we just need to figure out, who is the ‘broom’ among them. Small things point towards bigger questions about identity, the relevance of language and the nature of control in our lives. Wallace has taken liberties in playing with certain philosophies and concluded that…HA! This book has loose ends too but not nearly as frustrating as IJ, so you can conclude whatever you want to. Just keep a watch on the words.
STORIES WITHIN THE STORIES WITHIN THE STORIES
Probably the best part of this book is the numerous stories told by Rick Vigorous to Lenore Beadsman. They all are surreal, ingenious, crazy, improbable and fascinating, but most importantly, they carry that unmistaken seal of David’s style and meta most importantly, they carries out David’s commentary about the art of writing fiction, especially by the young writers. The thing about his writing which I really like - there’s always something 'more' I wish for. 'And then what happened?' was a pet question I carried throughout this book. Sometimes he answers and sometimes he comes to an abrupt end. He teases and pleases at the same time and dammit! I love him for that. And for all those who love him or planning to do so, just read this Bill Katovsky’s article if you haven’t:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/da...
Fiction either moves mountains or it’s boring; it moves mountains or it sits on its ass.
A sweep of the broom and the mountains moved. -
This book flat-out demands a multi-layered meta-review. I mean, it has everything a po-mosexual could ask for: characters aware they might be characters in a novel, nested short stories read by the characters that comment on the parent text, an intentionally unresolved and fractured plot, pages and pages of ironic philosophical dialogue, and an ending that just
Unfortunately, that level of post-modern detachment requires real talent, the talent of, say, David Foster Wallace. Yet DFW famously criticized this, his debut novel, as reading like the work of a hyper-literate 14-year-old. Maybe. 14-year-olds aren't generally known for their restraint and this book includes everything, whether it works or not. The thing is, an astonishing amount of it does work, provided, of course, you are into this sort of thing. It is very much of a muchness: an evangelical talking parrot, a global conspiracy involving baby food, missing senior citizens, secret chemical formulas, childhood sexual obsession, mirages in a man-made desert, a fat man occupying infinite space, a character named Wang Dang Lang. You have to just go with it. It helps that it is really, really funny. Don't let the pout and that stupid bandanna (and, you know, the tragic way he died) fool you: DFW was a funny man.
This review in inadequate. But it is aware of that fact. Onto Infinite Jest! I have a feeling this was just a warm-up. -
Are Words the Totality of Thoughts? Fighting Wittengenstein with (attempted) Brevity
The first thing that may strike a reader of DFW’s debut is his commitment to excessive detail. I imagine that his intention, among other things, was to illustrate the idea that words circumscribe our ability to conceptualize; thus, the mental imaging that is conjured up by his descriptions are malleable due to the author’s choice of certain word inclusion and exclusion. In a humorous bit, he describes in gross detail the causal chain of events that involves a person in a building window, a bird and a squirrel, which all lead to our protagonist walking up to the building in question.
My Robot is Alive and Telling Me Horrible Things About Its Own Thoughts
My favorite part about DFW is his ability to make philosophical concepts palpable and real in our everyday lives. Albeit, he accomplishes this via strange, hyperreal scenarios, but he renders the intellectual, emotional. In exercising a particularly Wittengensteinian idea—and similar ideas of other linguistic “use” theorists—of the way in which language has no meaning in of itself (has no “propositions” in philo-speak), he makes a hilarious parody of an evangelical bird. The bird has learned to imitate the sounds of words—specially those that praise Jesus. Yet can it be said that the bird means anything by the words? DFW has you contemplating this while your sides burst with laughter.
The Meaning we Make with Words is Meaningful to Ourselves only insofar as that Meaning has Meaning to Our Life’s Meaning
Lenore Beadsman always wants to hear the stories that her boyfriend knows from reading unpublished manuscripts. Through these several stories within the book, we get to hear about (a) mind(s) hard at work, trying to create meaning out of their lives via story-making, a new type of therapy according to the
New York Times. Yet, as DFW says “these kids should be out drinking beer and seeing films and having panty raids and losing virginities and writhing to suggestive music, not making up long, sad, convoluted stories”. As DFW takes a self-conscious jab at himself, so he does at me for eschewing social opportunities to create overly-complex stories that are extremely sad. The book is permeated by depression, but DFW makes it insightful and hilarious all while retaining the honesty of that sadness. In another side story, a recently divorced man decides to eat all the universe in order to eliminate the subject/object divide in the world, because he cannot stand the thought of being alone anymore. Another story is of a man who is constantly falling in love with every women he meets, so he goes after the ugliest woman he’s met in order to form a legitimate relationship but she has problems of her own.
A Happy Ending?
All of the character’s problems are ultimately traceable to the fact that we must rely on words for meaning, but words are finite and cannot express the entirety of the world. And since meaning is circumscribed by language, we will always fall short of filling ourselves with any kind of meaningful satisfaction. But DFW doesn’t necessarily stick to the hard-nosedWittgenstein(perhaps instead, logical positivist) approach. As implied by the end, our imaginations (and mental content) still create meaning within despite language’s pitfalls; you might even be able to fill in the blank for what comes at the end of this very—
(This is part of my 600 project. To give meaningful and insightful reviews in 600 words or less. This seemed like the appropriate book to do it with) -
Critical Problems on the Line
Could it be that Lenore Beadsman and Leopold Bloom have more in common than just their initials (Broom/Bloom, get the clue?)? Both are engaged in a fairly closely detailed tour of their respective cities. Both are described in and through a variety of literary styles, often comedic, digressions, and innovations. Both exist in order to demonstrate points about language as much as to carry the narrative along. And the auxiliary characters to both are a pretty rum lot of social freaks, incipient psychopaths, and grasping businessmen, sometimes simultaneously. I mean come on. How much proof do you need. Somebody’s a plagiarist, so’ ‘nuff.
Well no. Maybe these are coincidences. Leopold exists in a down to earth descriptive world that Lenore simply doesn’t share. Leoplod encounters genuine streets and authentic shops and pubs (look ‘em up!). Lenore exists in a universe that sustains corporate entities like Hunt & Peck, Stonecipheco, Rummage and Naw, or Frequent & Vigorous, the latter being merely a tax dodge masquerading as a publisher. These simply don’t exist in the telephone directory, much less Google maps. None of your modernist realism there. No way, José.
Then again, there is the determinism versus free will thing going on in both. And the associated questions of religion. Some subjects are just untalkaboutable as Leopold and Lenore each might say. Does that make these subjects spiritual, or nonsense, or maybe even Catholic? Not to mention the suggestions in the text that words aren’t often used in ‘official’ ways, in fact that there may be no official ways at all. Oh, and there’s lot of odd sex involved too. You’ve got to admit that’s a pretty creepy connection, all this primitive non-verbal stuff. That’s code, man, and no mistake.
Yeah, but there sure isn’t a lot of this telephone mixup business that Leopold ever had to deal with. I forget, did he even have a telephone? But Lenore finds it a major headache; it’s sort of central to her life. In fact her whole town suffers; it’s like a running joke. So Cleveland can’t be Dublin; Lake Erie ain’t the River Liffey no matter what anyone says to the contrary. And what would Lionel know about baby food, toxic or not? Bupkis is what Leopold would know about baby food. But Lenore was presumably brought up on the stuff and it’ll sure be a large part of her future. And there wasn’t even one cockatiel in Leoplold’s’s life, nowhere, ever.
So I think I’m entitled to make a firm conclusion about the state of affairs here. Wallace never heard of Joyce. There, I’ve said it. I’m proud to be out of the closet. And for all those critics out there who never mentioned the two together, you left an important, if much needed, gap in the market to be filled. Remember: You read it here first. -
A very enjoyable book, which is lighter in tone than
Infinite Jest but still very complex.
I finished this over a week ago, while travelling up to Scotland for a walking trip on Skye, and it is no longer fresh in the memory since I have read other things since.
As in Infinite Jest, Wallace has created a fictional landscape of considerable complexity - an Ohio governor who decides to create a desert (the Great Ohio Desert, so like O.N.A.N. a silly acronym) as a tourist attraction, a bird whose ability to talk is enhanced by an untested learning drug, and a man who wants to eat everything, literally. The core of the story is more of a rites of passage tale, and for the most part the story avoids the narrative jumps and lengthy footnotes that made Infinite Jest so confusing. The book has a philosophical underpinning that I wouldn't claim to understand.
I can't help thinking that Wallace struggled with form and structure, and this one ends ambigiously in mid sent- -
Looks like I'm going to have to wait until I read Infinite Jest to see if DFW really is as good a novelist as most of the reviews for IJ claim him to be. Yes, I can see why the critics lauded over this, and yes, there is no denying that it's really funny in places - a handful of scenes I went back over and read three or four times because they were so good, but I've been way more impressed with DFW the essayist so far. Despite having a mind that is clearly enriched with such imagination, and me liking the idea of stories within stories, Joycean word play, and zany escapades, The Broom of the System was just too uneven a novel for me to go beyond three stars. It's a shame, because a big part of me wanted, and, to some extent, expected, this to go down as one of the great debut novels of the last 50 years. I will say this, if we're going down the road of Pynchon comparisons, this was nowhere near as frustrating as his first work, V, while I also felt like The Crying of Lot 49 was always shimmering away in the background. -
It was the tree frog story. The story about the Thermos woman who is always in profile, hiding under scarves and out of the way of all human connections. It was the tree frog that lived in the hole in her neck, and he through holes in the scarves around her neck. The tree frog that she nurtured and resented. Symbiotic amphibiotics. That was a part of her and yet not apart of her. This whole other not self thing that kept herself out of everything else. And the tree frog can only blink sadly, and I guess wait for whatever it is she's going to do out of her very complicated feelings. Or it can sing out of its control and be helpless to connections too. When Thermos woman dies on the train and the tree frog finds the man who couldn't help but fall in love with everything. He blinks at him. And they are both sad and at a total loss about connecting to anyone else.
The whole thing about reality and stories, knowing anyone else. Being fucked up about not having such a good grip on those things. So I already knew this about myself, pretty much. But this is a book about those things that feels like being the one to blink back sadly and so it is much, much better than knowing it. It is being caught between wanting to stay shut in your apartment all of your time feeding your own tree frog bits of food off your fork. Or maybe cutting it off for good. I know I really, really don't want to do the cutting off for good option. I hope that never happens. The Broom of the System did its sad chirrup song to that part of my soul that aches for the looking back sadly. That's something I suspect about myself. That what I really want is to have that in between part, like it's a story, rather than the whole connected part by itself (does anyone have that? Or do they only want it?). The someone else's tree frog. If there's a connection you can get out of knowing about THAT part of someone. That's what I want and I think stories are one of the ways to get it. And if it's not a story you could make stories out of it. If Lenore had learned out to make stories herself she might have felt less stuck in other people (maybe subtextual instead of just sexual).
I would have loved this book forever for the toad story all by itself. I love this book. Not only for that but I know I'm not going to forget that one. My heart did that thing where it beat slower and faster at the same time. I said "Oh" to myself. There's so much more and it all read to me like telling me stories in that getting unstuck way. I'm a sensitive little fucker, really (gasp!), and that's exactly what I like to sit around and do. What I like to do is get sensitive and sit there and ponder shit about people in books like they are real. Then I take that shit and make people who are real into not real and so on. So I totally get the dilemna that Lenore had about how to be real. Wait, or is she resenting those of us that do the story making up? Nooo, we have no control! Come back, Lenore!
I was getting desperate for Lenore to dump Rick by the end, too. When I say desperate I mean that I squirmed in my seat and sighed a lot. I'd put the book down and sigh some more (it's all that damned Rick's fault). I would have said totally different things to him in those therapy sessions than Dr. Jay did. (I love the conversations like these that make me start to have my own conversations.)
Lavache, aka The Antichrist, I didn't particularly care for. That and when Lenore cries for the first time ever in front of anyone were direct telling without the complicated space you have to figure out for yourself. Nooooo, but I live for subtext and undertones! I tried not to read reviews again before writing mine because I had a feeling the complaints weren't going to be the same. I really just got frustrated like Lavache was the wrong kind of mouth piece. I lost interest in Lenore. I couldn't get enough of Bloemker and his blow up doll, going to the desert to wander and lost bars.
Hey, you know what I always loved about reviews of David Foster Wallace books on goodreads? The "This part was written just for me" reviews. I don't want to say what mine are out loud because they would then sound cheesey (the cockatiel one is easy to guess by anyone who knows me here) and not goosebumpy personal. Then if anyone demanded to know and I gave in they would sound even weaker because I made a big deal about not telling right now (just be content with cockatiels! And I love that Vlad the Impaler had a "mohawk". One of mine is Lester because he has Lester Young crest. I never thought of a mohawk, amazingly enough). I read in
my favorite The Broom of the System review that DFW was hard on himself for writing himself in as Lenore. Noooo, that's perfect! That means he's us too. Sensitive and thinks too much. I wouldn't want it any other way. And I am unbelievably grateful to him for that because there are lots of times when I want it another way and it sucks to be so sensitive. (Damn, does that mean that I can relate a bit to Rick too? Um.... no?)
Although, I think I would have dumped Lenore, too, and looked for the bad typists who penned those stories. We'd run away. I'd be the toad and blink. And then I'd get blinked at.
The best part is that there is no last word.
P.s. If I haven't said so already, I love David Foster Wallace. All I want to do is read and I'm going to give my thanks to you. (Run away with me!)
P.s.s. (The review in my head was way better than this one. Forgot what I was gonna say, again.) -
I am angry at myself for finishing this book. It was a total waste of time. The only reason I did finish it was because the author introduced multiple story lines that had NOTHING to do with each other, and I was intrigued to see how Wallace would tie it all together. Which he did not do. At all.
"Lets see, I'll have my extremely boring main character's grandmother escape from a nursing home, then completely ignore that point while I have her and her boyfriend lay in bed and tell random short stories with no purpose that last for 15 PAGES EACH ( I could just publish a book of random short stories but that would be less confusing) Then I will have them go do exciting adventures like a} going to talk to a psychologist multiple times for no purpose, and b] going to visit her brother in college! Around this scintillating non-plot I will throw in confusing items like : the man who eats so much he literally shakes the ground when he walks ; the construction of an artificial desert just outside of Cleveland, just for kicks ; and a parrot that becomes the star of a Christian Broadcasting Network talk show. Then I will give no closure on anything! In fact, I WON'T EVEN BOTHER TO FINISH WRITING THE LAST SENTENCE OF THE BOOK!
WHY WHY?
the only reason this book gets 1 star instead of zero is because it has characters named Wang Dang Lang, Rick Vigorous, Sigurd Foamwhistle and a bird named Vlad the Impaler. 1 star for good names. but that is it!
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Meravigliosa opera di un ventiquattrenne di genio assoluto. Divertente, dissacrante, demenziale (come si diceva giusto negli anni '80).
Mi ha fatto venire in mente Animal House intervallato da episodi dei Monty Pyton.
Ma il tono goliardico spesso lascia posto ad osservazioni di folgorante acutezza e soprattutto nella dinamica dei rapporti tra i personaggi ad una sensibilità già fuori dal comune. Il racconto del convegno tra Andy "Wang dang" Lang e Lenore Beadsman è un prodigio di delicatezza ed autenticità nel descrivere le schermaglie tra i due giovani.
Una menzione speciale per la traduzione di Claudio Perroni (che già si è meritato un santosubito per la sua ritraduzione di Furore), che essendo del 2008 - credo - inserisce alcune espressioni del gergo millennial, che contribuiscono a conservare la giovanile freschezza dell'opera; tipico caso in cui il traduttore/traditore è un benvenuto. -
Μου αρέσει πάρα πολύ να έρχομαι σε επαφή με βιβλία που θα με βγάλουν από το αναγνωστικό μου “comfort zone”. Άσχετα αν θα πετύχει το πείραμα ή όχι είναι πάντα μια πρόκλησ�� να βγεις από τα νερά σου, να βαδίσεις σε νέα μονοπάτια που υπό άλλες συνθήκες δε θα το έκανες τόσο εύκολα. Η Σκούπα και το σύστημα του Wallace είναι ένα τέτοιο αναγνωστικό πείραμα που με το τέλος του με αφήνει με λίγο ανάμεικτα συναισθήματα. Η ανάγνωση του συγκεκριμένου βιβλίου ήταν μια πραγματικά ξεχωριστή εμπειρία. Το ύφος γραφής ήταν πολύ ιδιαίτερο ενώ ο συγγραφέας με το ιδιαίτερο και μοντέρνο χιούμορ του καταφέρνει αν μη τι άλλω να σε τσιγκλίσει και να σε παρακινήσει να τον ακολουθήσεις στο ταξίδι του. Η ικανότητα του να επινοεί ιστορίες που κινούνται στα πλαίσια του πραγματικού και του φανταστικού ή σουρεαλιστικού είναι πραγματικά ζηλευτή. Αδιαμφισβήτητα πρόκειται για μια ιδιοφυία που μπορεί μεν η γραφή του να φανεί παράλογη και να μην ταιριάξει σε κάποιους γιατί δε γράφει για όλους αλλά σίγουρα είναι ξεχωριστή. Δε θα πω ψέματα ότι δεν υπήρξαν στιγμές που ένιωσα λίγο σα χαμένη στο διάστημα γιατί η εξοικείωση μου με βιβλία φανταστικού κινείται σε ρηχά επίπεδα όμως σίγουρα το βιβλίο με κέντρισε και θα ήθελα να ξαναδιαβάσω στο μέλλον κάτι ακόμα από το συγγραφέα. Κάτι μου έλειψε, κάτι με κέρδισε, κάπου στη μέση τα βρήκαμε. Εξαιρετικό το δεύτερο μέρος με τους μονολόγους. Ένα βιβλίο απαιτητικό για όσους θέλουν να δοκιμάσουν μια διαφορετική αναγνωστική εμπειρία.
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I could very theoretically start listing the shelves where this touches upon, but I'd rather just say that this is a first novel most cocaine heads listening to the middle days of heavy metal would want to write if they were hopelessly in love with with the craziest *roughage* post-modern deconstructionists willing to push all narratives into wonderfully feathered *roughage* prose that's more absurd mixed wth frame within frame within frame *roughage* stories that are linked so very vividly with one another while requiring such heavy *roughage* to digest simply because we're fed the literary equivalent of eight steaks.
Yes. That's right. Eight Steaks. And don't you fucking forget the desert.
This novel is not the grotesquely fat monstrosity that wants not only to consume and replace the universe, as in
Infinite Jest, but we do see the much smaller man that Wallace's later book becomes, as it engorges himself, (and us, by proxy,) in record time.
I'm sure I'll incur the wrath of many IJ heads by saying that I absolutely love this book in comparison to that other whale. The frankly told mini-tales were some of the coolest and craziest and fucked up stories, ever. Imagine good mini-novels told as a quick narrative in bed after or before sex, then imagine getting your mind fucked. This is the kind of thing you can expect in this little novel, and it happens on many different levels. Can I say how tickled I was by all the almost meta interpretations of turning your idea of self into a fully three dimensional character? This coming from a psychologist to one of the main characters? Well, shit, you have no idea, how many times I was tickled by similar awesome bits.
It's very smart, the tale is actually rather linear, although there is NO CLIMAX. Not really. There's a headlong rush of words speeding up and speeding up in a Wittgenstein coitus that ends in the ultimate of interruptus, almost as if we were hit over the head by a big broom.
I DO kinda wish I could be a little surprised by that, but it's par for course. :) Wonderful and smart characters, truly oddball situations and conversations, delightfully feathered prose that links all these disparate parts together in a paint splattered mosaic of trash.
Seriously brilliant. Every page is enjoyable. We get the sense of a grand plan shaping. But of course, this is DFW. He is the king of the fuck you. :) I did mention that he's rather heavy metal in his outlook on life, didn't I? lol We all know what he said when someone paid him the compliment by calling him brilliant, right? He said just that. Fuck You. Classic. :) -
It's pretty stunning how fully formed DFW's style and direction already were in his debut novel: The wordplay, the postmodern tricks, the philosophical musings, the absurd dialogues, the quirky characters, the trademark themes like entertainment, consumerism, lack of empathy, failure of communication, simply all the good DFW stuff. Our protagonist is Lenore Beadsman (24, so the same age as the author when the novel was published), a telephone switchboard operator in Cleveland trying to solve the mystery behind her great-grandmother's escape from a nursery home. But let's be real: The plot is not the author's main concern, he is here to shower his readers with witty lingustic twists.
Wallace submitted the novel as one of two undergraduate honors theses at Amherst College where he studied philosophy and became interested in Wittgenstein. In his
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the Austrian philosopher laid the groundwork for the linguistic turn which declared the use and function of language to be a central concern when pondering philosphical problems. "The Broom of the System" is a testament to Wallace's fascination with Wittgenstein's thoughts on the relationship between logic and language, and this fascination overshadows everything else in the text.
Which means: There is a lot of l'art pour l'art in this novel, it's like a game for fans of linguistics - you can certainly enjoy the humor without knowing the theoretical background, but knowing it will help understand the intelligence behind the gags. Still, I have to admit that the whole thing tended to be a little too meandering for my taste, and sometimes I struggled to keep my focus. As per usual with Wallace, pacing and narrative discipline are not his forte, the whole thing is sprawling and goes off in all directions, which is of course also part of the charme.
For all fans of pomo extravaganzas, DFW is essential reading, and even though this one isn't my favorite, I'm still a fan. -
Βαθμολογία: 3.5*
Η σχέση μου με το Μεταμοντέρνο δεν είναι ιδανική - τουναντίον. Ίσως το αφήγημά του δεν μου ακούγεται πειστικό, ιδίως η απεγνωσμένη του ανάγκη να διαφοροποιηθεί από τους Προγόνους με κάθε δυνατό -και αδύνατο- τρόπο.
Σε κάθε περίπτωση, οφείλει κάποιος να κρίνει κατά περίπτωση, δεδομένου πως στη γενίκευση κρύβεται ο… Διάβολος. "Η σκούπα και το σύστημα", κατά τη ταπεινή μου άποψη, είναι ένα κατά το ήμισυ ολοκληρωμένο έργο.
Το μισό εκείνο που εξαντλείται στο μεταμοντέρνο χιούμορ (ξεκάθαρη η επιρροή του Πύντσον, εν γένει) υπό τη μορφή διαλόγων, με άφησε αδιάφορο και με ένα αίσθημα αναγνωστικής κόπωσης. Το άλλο μισό, αντιθέτως, το πιο "σοβαρό", υπό τη μορφή μονολόγων και περιγραφών, δείχνει έναν εξαιρετικό συγγραφέα, με ιδιαίτερη φωνή. Αυτόν τον συγγραφέα θα ήθελα να γνωρίσω περισσότερο – ίσως κάποια στιγμή που το opus magnum του (Infinite Jest ) "ευτυχήσει" να μεταφερθεί στη ελληνική γλώσσα. -
Lord Wallace of Amherst’s debut novel is—pardon the obvious—an enormo-homage to the postmodernist ladies. I was surprised at the sheer Gaddisness of this one (narratorless dialogue, two interlocutors per section, frequently deployed throughout) and not so surprised at the Delilloian weirdness and Barthian frametalemaking. The structure seems intricate and impressive, although the plot is mostly linear—each alphabetical sub-chapter responds to events close to those in previous alphabetical sub-chapters, taking the sheen off the structural play. Dave’s voice arrived fully formed. His freewheeling comic imagination (which he wheeled a little too freely in the 400pp-too-long Infinite Jest) isn’t necessarily my favourite characteristic of dfwian prose, but he also lards the book with his trademark monologues (all his monologues here, and arguably in his other fictions, being put into the mouths of implausibly clever Wallace-alikes) which also serve as a conduit for the stories that account for the metafictive element of this not-very-metafictive novel. Not sure I was particularly swept up by The Broom in the end—the mostpart was wildly entertaining but the whole felt largely aimless, building to climaxes that never climaxed. But. But. Hey. Certainly one heck of a debut novel . . .
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This is my introduction to DFW. This book is pretty impressive for being written by a 24-year-old. The problem is this book doesn't hold together really well. It feels like it has a plot but in the end you think about it and it didn't really have one. I didn't care too much for the end of the book and I felt like even though there were a lot of really funny parts, most of the humor is very awkward. I do want to go deeper into Wallace's works.
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Quando DIO è un deserto artificiale, La zona in cui vivi le curve di una donna e un'epistassi l'inizio di un indizio che non porta a nulla
Il trauma adolescenziale di Lenore ✸ 1/2
le omonimie e i nomi impossibili ✸✸
Le forzature comiche e la mancanza di una trama ✸✸✸
La mancanza di una trama, le due Lenore e Stonecipher LaVache Beadsman (l'anticristo) ✸✸✸✸
DFW ✸✸✸✸✸
Lenore Beadsman, la protagonista del romanzo, è la rampolla di una famiglia che detiene il controllo di una società che incorpora la maggior parte delle attività di Cleveland. Per una sorta di spirito di ribellione, dovuto al modo in cui è cresciuta, rifiuta di lavorare nell'azienda paterna e opta per un sottopagato lavoro da centralinista presso la casa editrice Frequent & Vigorous.
Una mattina Lenore riceve una telefonata preoccupante dal direttore della casa di cura dove è alloggiata la sua bisnonna, la simpatica vecchietta - ossessionata da Wittgenstein e con il sistema circolatorio di un rettile - è scomparsa nel nulla assieme a decine di altri pazienti e personale sanitario. La scomparsa della bisnonna/mentore innescherà un processo a ritroso da parte di Lenore costellato da ricordi e incontri con la sua complicatissima famiglia per comprendere più su se stessa, le sue fobie le sue chiusure
Il mondo che crea è strabiliante, a sprazzi fantascientifico:
- il Deserto Incommensurabile dell'Ohio (DIO) con sabbia nera e laghetti per pescare
- Società assurde di omogeneizzati da modifiche di DNA, altre di servizi BDSM denominata “Bambi l’Antro della Disciplina”
Molto è in tonalità MAIUSCOLE quasi a sfotterne la vacuità dietro gli altisonanti nomi e marchi. Questo è il mondo strabiliante in cui è ambientato il romanzo; un mondo così strabiliante da avere bisogno di più sottolivelli narrativi.
La scrittura di DFW è decostruita, piena di ammiccamenti, ironia, e risvolti filosofici e profonde sofferenze interiori guastate sempre da un ambiente caotico che permea il testo.
Giusto, Il TITOLO:
Lenore mi fece sedere in cucina e prese una scopa e si mise a scopare furiosamente il pavimento, e poi mi chiese quale fosse secondo me la parte più fondamentale della scopa, la più cruciale, se il manico o la chioma. Il manico o la chioma. E io non sapevo cosa rispondere, e lei si mise a scopare ancor più violentemente, e io cominciai a innervosirmi, e finalmente dissi che secondo me era la chioma, perché senza manico si può scopare lo stesso, basta tenere in mano l’affare con la chioma, mentre scopare solo col manico è impossibile, e a quel punto lei mi agguantò e mi scaraventò giù dalla sedia e mi gridò qualcosa cosa tipo: «Già, perché a te la scopa serve per scopare, no? Ecco a cosa ti serve la scopa, eh?» e roba del genere. E gridò che se invece la scopa ci serviva per spaccare una finestra allora la parte fondamentale era chiaramente il manico, e passò a dimostrarlo spaccando la finestra della cucina, cosa che fece accorrere i domestici, terrorizzati; ma che se appunto la scopa ci serviva per scopare, tipo per esempio i vetri rotti della finestra, e dai che scopava, allora l’essenza della cosa era la chioma.
Su 558 pagine penso l'unico riferimento sia questo (e La lenore citata non è la protagonista ma la Bisnonna).
Perché lo sto leggendo? Ho avuto a più riprese l'impressione di subire una Supercazzola
Eppure
l'ho
letto.
Ho deciso (più che compreso) che è Il linguaggio l'indiscusso protagonista di questo romanzo sotto il profilo:
1) stilistico
2) filosofico
3) goliardico
È infatti evidente l'influsso della filosofia di Wittgenstein. Non è un caso che il libro che la bisnonna di Lenore porti sempre con sé è quello delle Ricerche filosofiche di Ludwig Wittgenstein. Secondo il filoso tedesco il linguaggio opera come elemento di costruzione della realtà. Quindi Non esiste più una realtà oggettiva raffigurata da quanto viene detto, bensì le parole acquistano senso e significato solo nel contesto in cui vengono utilizzate. Di questi "giochi linguistici" DFW se ne appropria e li plasma fino a sbrogliare quasi tutta la matassa prima del patatrac finale.
Il FINALE
Mi appello ai laureati in filosofia o fruitori di LSD per trovare un epilogo.
P.S: le parti delle sedute psicoanalitiche dimostrano grande padronanza del linguaggio terapeutico (seppur scimmiottato) un dramma che le parole con cui riusciva ad essere ambizioso e creativo non lo abbiano salvato dal suo deserto nero interiore
P.P.S: Sì i Post Scriptum in un romanzo del genere ci stanno per forza. Servono come allenamento per le note di Infinite Jest -
I’ve pained and obsessed over the recognition of genius in others for a long time now and finally feel like I’ve made some progress in my own thoughts: this is the most I will ever have to say about a book I read only a third of before giving up.
This, this, a story told to me with all the confidence of a young man so filled with self-belief and enthusiasm for a tale that he might well explain the entire plot of a film he enjoyed to me after I had just answered ‘Yes, I did see it.’ [1]
To those of you who identified a general “first-book-problem-feel”, the following: almost completely paraphrased, apart from the DFW bits- I made them up obvs.
Robert McKee says: There must be an inciting incident very early on in the story- if possible, in the very first scene. If a scene does not progress your story, it is there most likely for background information. Cut it out! Find another way to put in that information.
DFW says: There must be an inciting incident at some point, surrounded by volumes of superfluity that wrap it up in 100 pages of background information before the next plot point arises. Tell the story out of order for no apparent reason, undercutting almost all story progressions you have. For example, if two characters are going to date, show them in bed together, and then explain how they first met- since your audience already knows that they are together, the excitement will instead come from… from um… [2]
Robert McKee says: it doesn’t need to be cut out of your story if it isn’t advancing the plot only if you are being funny.
DFW says: Exactly! Just as well I’m always funny.
(I say: this in particular strikes me as a bit of a risk. Occasionally hilarious, sometimes very funny, but frequently incomprehensible and at that point, since it doesn’t advance the plot, purely self-indulgent. Depending on how much you weight each of these properties might well determine your overall enjoyment- that’s something I can’t predict for sure.)
Anton Chekhov says: Cut a good story anywhere, and it will bleed.
DFW says: Hide your story under a thick callus, that chapters may be shorn off in their entirety with no harm done whatsoever to the sequence of events.
Anton Chekhov says: Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.
DFW says: Lay guns on the floor, the walls, cover your characters in guns and meticulously detail every occasion on which they ever encountered a gun. May none of them go off.
[The developers of the game Half-Life 2] say: Give the player a hint of the true depth of the world, and let them fill in the rest themselves.
DFW says: The first gun that Lenore ever encountered was a Smith & Wesson M&P22 with a scratch on the hilt from where her father snatched it off her at age 11 and it scraped on the steel buckle of his Versace patent leather belt given to him as a present by Lenore’s great grandmother on the… And the second gun she ever encountered was… and the gun’s owner was…
Stephen King (
On Writing) says: I’m not particularly keen on writing which exhaustively describes the physical characteristics of the people in the story and what they’re wearing… I’d rather let the reader supply the faces, the builds, and the clothing as well... if I describe (my
Carrie), it freezes out yours, and I lose a little bit of the bond of understanding I want to forge between us. Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s. When it comes to actually pulling this off, the writer is much more fortunate than the filmmaker, who is almost always doomed to show too much… including, in nine cases out of ten, the zipper running up the monster’s back.
DFW says: the zipper was of stainless steel (that is a steel alloy with a minimum of 10.5% chromium content by mass) manufactured by…
Anton Chekhov says: Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
DFW says: Tell me the moon is shining, its angle, proportions, the exact hue and how it relates personally to each of the characters and the first time they saw the moon and how exactly the moon has and will always affect them because when they were five their mother first used bad language in front of them on the vernal equinox. This is what is known as “characterisation”.
Marina Abramović says: To be a young and famous artist is the killer.
DFW says: To be a young and famous artist is- the goal!
Ira Glass says: (well,
all of this, worth a watch for storytellers)
DFW says: Hehehe. Wait, seriously?
Samuel R. Delany in
Dhalgren says: Should I triumph over my laziness, I suspect I would banish all feeling for economical expression which is the basis of style. If I overcame my bitterness, I'm afraid my work would lose all wit and irony. Were I to defeat my power-madness, my craving for fame and recognition, I suspect my work would become empty of all psychological insight, not to mention compassion for others who share my failings. Minus all three, we have work only concerned with the truth, which is trivial without those guys that moor it to the world that is the case.
DFW says: (weepily a la Renee Zellwegger) You lost me at “economical expression”.
I’ve kept my own writing mostly well-hidden, never seriously pursued publication and pained about not adhering to all of these rules, but here’s someone who starts writing at the same age as me, can gleefully forget about all of them and be praised to high heaven (I will explain how to handle this kind of jealousy in due course).
This is the heart of postmodernism. Or wait, is it? All these things I seem to have collected after the age of 22, as a somewhat crude but nonetheless useful comparison. None of the writing seemed to be to be a knowledgeable revelation of the conceits of storytelling, it was much more accidental. As an example, I have a friend who works as a camera technician and made a postmodernist short film that was really good, but he wondered why his boss advised him not to use Godard’s techniques in future- well, you need to know the rules before you can break them, this we know. It’s not that I have a problem with the rules being broken, it’s my suspicion that they went by unknown. And I have grown to believe and maintain that “quirk” in storytelling is some form of enemy.
To use DFW’s analogy, the different parts of a broom might indeed be useful for different applications, but in this case we shouldn’t be forced to choose parts. Without enough glue to hold the thing together, I don’t know what it is, but it’s not a broom.
Back to the jealousy: if you want to be jealous of someone, you have to be jealous of everything, so the aphorism goes. Wallace fans should most definitely read
Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself where his suffering, self-doubt and unenviable smoking and junk food habits come to light- and by the way, not the useful Proustian suffering or the brand of anger-fuel that stokes Dostoyevsky’s creativity furnace, but a kind of useless almost Scottish yawning stretch of misery, so it seems to me. And let’s talk about that too. A book like this, so sprawling, warm and large can only come from a similar country- as a Scot, I’ve chosen the wrong role model. And the chapters with the short story ideas: what’s his point? Have you never had a failed short story concept? If they were chapters in Broom that just consisted of the short story I’d still want them excised and put somewhere else, but at least then it would make sense but no, it’s like a treatment that’s been halfheartedly converted into a convenient conversation, yet more evidence that this is a work far from a British claustrophobic minimalism that would be more interesting for me at least [3].
In the pointless self vs. DFW that I conducted, I’ve since decided that it’s noble to do any work well, and competition is far too diffuse for exact comparisons between any of us- what a relief. This is most apparent in artistic circles, but I see it extending to work of any form. This of course you already knew but as a scientist I'm not one to believe something without witnessing the evidence.
Finally: Screenwriter Larry Cohen says: Anything in life is going to be disastrous for you if you live your life to please other people… (and all the rest
here at 5:00 min onwards)
So, best of luck to all individuals doing anything! We’re all trailblazers in our own way, and even when our disciplines don’t lend themselves to fame, we'll know when we’ve caught the big fish, and ultimately that might be the extent of our satisfaction. That will be good enough for us!
If you found any of this useful, it’s a greater joy that you did so than that you read it from me, and that was the anxiety release of 1/3 of The Broom of The System.
[1] As I go on to discuss, apparently info-dumping is fine now. Here are some thoughts on Goodreads reviews in general.
I’m a chemical engineer but I don’t understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Entropy is disorder and disorder always increases, you cannot make a 100% efficient heat engine. Fine, but I don’t know what that means.
Entropy is defined as follows:
dS = dQ/T
That is, an infinitesimal change in disorder is equal to an infinitesimal change in heat divided by absolute temperature. Fine. But I don’t know what that means.
That doesn’t make me a bad chemical engineer. And I can use the Second Law because it’s been written down and understood by someone else, but that still doesn’t mean that I understand it.
Why, if you are a writer or otherwise, would you need to love and understand every enormous complex book that comes your way? Would you need to pretend to understand it, ever?
There was a code implanted in my brain that set off quite recently and programmed me to voraciously consume and purge out art. I mean to say that 2+ years ago when I never needed to care about writing fiction I only read
Murakami about 2 maybe 3 times a year, because his were the only books that resonated with me. I used to enter bookshops and think ‘Wow, look at all these books- who the hell reads all of this? I’ll have one Murakami, please.’ And that was just dandy. It is no surprise to me that if now programmed to read 100 books/yr I genuinely like/love about 5 of them and understand around 20-25, depending on how many enormous complex meticulously WTF books I have chosen to read that year. And that’s just fine. And in trash there are moments of greatness, and in “really important works” sometimes there’s none at all. And that’s just fine too. Reading anything is just what you’re doing right now, it’s scanning your eyes left to right over a bunch of ordered letters, no matter what those letters seem to communicate.
It’s no secret to either of us that the reason we communicate on this site is not through an interest in how respectively clever or verbacious either of us are- I submit that such an interest would only serve to distance us. Why then, if that is true, would that change for writing reviews or fiction?
[2] In
...Becoming Yourself he will suggest that the non-linearity of his writing reflects the non-linearity of modern life. Yet
Robert Musil writes in an extended musing in
The Man Without Qualities that “our activities no longer follow a logical sequence” in 1000+ pages of linearly-structured albeit Modernist prose. I suspect that Wallace’s non-linearity is part of his apparent fondness for quirks.
[3] Although if we’re saying this is acceptable and enjoyable practice, here’s an essay I wrote about Facebook for my own satisfaction, but that I never found a proper home for (oh well, bump it where it doesn’t belong! Apparently that’s totally okay now).
Why Facebookman is the worst superhero ever:
He’s pretty, with evidence from every angle, or for girls the single practiced angle, the rejects disposed of in a touchscreen bin. He goes to restaurants and clubs. He’s an extrovert, like a decent chunk of the population. He travels to infinite destinations, although mostly the locations whose tourist boards pay for them to appear in Hollywood films. He’s in love, which cannot be seen, but that doesn’t stop Facebookman: his relationship is documented in posts to and from his beloved. When there is a tragic news event, Facebookman is capable of real human emotion. He’s a “nice guy”. Good and evil do battle in everyone but him.
What does a well-lived life look like? Clearly he believes it has an appearance. The Bucket List and Things To Do Before You Die address death and the need to ‘Make The Most of It’. ‘It’ used to be life, now It’s trying to be Facebookman. And foreign travel used to be a luxury: ‘You’ve never had it so good’, said the PM in the 50s. Now it’s a necessity, a thing to do before we die, before we kick the bucket. You haven’t lived until you’ve jumped out a plane, touched a dolphin, smashed through your living room window whatever but it’s Pics Or It Didn’t Happen. Who takes the time to choose a holiday they will enjoy the most, who looks at the sky and wonders why, who’s taking naps as they please without fear? Well everyone does, they just don’t put it on Facebook, but when so much of their time goes into planning and executing “life”, they don’t do “the rest” enough. But it’s TL;DR, takes time and effort and time is finite just like our lives. Us twenty and thirty-somethings are so concerned with dying and Making The Most Of It, rarely doing either. In later life it’s Keeping Up With The Joneses 2.0, “School Reunion: Who Lost?” forever, appearances that are kept up while you sleep.
When it’s so prevalent, how many people will understand when you choose to be anything but the preened expensive socialite with undiagnosed Life-Dysmorphic Disorder?
Postmodernist literature was in its prime once the TV was everywhere, and in part illustrated the quantity of stories and level of choice, the customisability of spare time, the blandness of real life compared to the action, comedy, horror, tragedy of TV. Every postmodernist argument has accentuated a thousand-fold with internet dependence. Postmodern angst is rife: it must be said with humour, self-deprecation, apology, narcissism- anything which stops it from sounding sincere, but ultimately accumulating into a hyperbolic neural algorithm of crap.
We’re all guilty of it, but don’t worry about resenting and deleting everything that’s on there: “no regrets” is one of Facebookman’s superpowers, it’s not for us mortals. But can we say how we feel without caring, submit our real thoughts knowing that they could be shot down by anyone, at any time?
I don't think that anyone needs or is able to be the living embodiment of the things they believe in. Rigid principles are one of the things Facebook subtly encourages, a permanent record of all activity stretching out years with the potential to be thrown back in our faces by friends, family, prospective employers, every keystroke in an invisible database to be used against you.
Still, it’s not fair to judge something without suggesting an alternative: so what about a life which involves constantly trying to recontextualise what we already do? A silent life, a life not necessarily in pictures? Take the following quote from Proust as an example:
“The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.”
Facebook is currently the opposite, a spiritually vacuous e-wasteland forcing those hundred others to see the world through the eyes of a single non-existent individual. But can we use it to see the world through each other? Saying how we feel, giving too much away? If there is ever backlash, snideness, postmodern angst-y retorts, we’ll just be constantly iterating our life hypothesis and taking in new information, which requires mistakes. We won't be bullied into doing otherwise; fixing everything in place; never pushing boundaries; allowing subjects to become taboo; being “nice”.
If we did start posting honestly all the time, the effect wouldn't be too noticeable or revolutionary, we would feel it through the intent of the words and begin to enjoy each other’s online presence.
At best, the competition can end if you want- there were no winners.
At least, you saw it through my eyes. I will always sympathise with you if you feel Facebook status anxiety: terrifying in its consumption, but completely trivial if you choose it to be. -
I sure wasted a lot of time in college is all I can say. All in all, not a bad PoMo novel from a undergraduate senior thesis. Some ideas didn't seem to be finished, or put away, but that also seems to be a familiar theme in DFW's work. Not my favorite DFW, but I'd still prefer most days to read mediocre DFW to good/great anyone else.
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Geniale nella sua estrosità e divertentissimo nel tentativo di sorprendere, il primo romanzo di DFW (scritto a 24 anni, la butto lì) è una discesa vorticosa nel mondo di Lenore Beadsman, che pur cercando in ogni modo di essere unica viene incasellata dal suo sfondo socioeconomico ma anche ambientale, e soprattutto da una miriade di personaggi surrealmente realistici.
Stupisce l'ilarità di Foster Wallace, che pur non manca - come sempre - di toccare argomenti a dir poco filosofici, con stili che si alternano tra l'intervista, il dialogo ininterrotto e racconti all'interno del racconto.
Quello che mi ha sorpreso di più è l'idea che Wallace sembra già avere di letteratura a una così giovane età, idea che poi si ripercuote sul resto della sua produzione.
- E poi m'è sembrato scritto un po'... C'è una frase, per esempio: "Sorrise beffardamente". Sorrise beffardamente? Dico, hai mai visto qualcuno sorridere beffardamente? Nessuno sorride beffardamente, tranne nei libri. Non era autentico. Era tipo un racconto su un racconto.[...]
Questa ricerca dell'autentico in un mondo simbolicamente surreale, la ricerca di un senso e di una "fuga dalla solitudine", come scrive Franzen in quarta di copertina, è la cifra stilistica di Wallace, al di là del figuro eclettico e hipster che è diventato nell'immaginario collettivo.
Al di là dell'eclettismo, e della difficoltà che si può incontrare leggendolo, è sempre incredibilmente sorprendente e divertente. -
Brevi appunti sparsi:
1. Questo è un genio.
2. Se cercate un libro con una trama lineare, un inizio e una fine, esposto chiaramente, con uno stile sempre uguale, canonico e mai stravagante, senza "voli" incomprensibili e filosofici (o presunti tali)... fermatevi qui e cambiate libro.
3. Scrivere a 24 anni un romanzo del genere significa o che hai un'immaginazione oltre ogni limite, o che sei completamente folle o che sei perennemente fatto. Propendo per un misto dei tre.
4. Si fa fatica a staccarsi dalla lettura, anche se cerchi di andare il più piano possibile per non bruciartelo così velocemente. Mi è durato meno di tre giorni, purtroppo.
(4b. E ora ne sento già la mancanza)
5. Non c'è il finale, e ne sono stato contento. Rimane tutto felicemente incompleto dopo 600 pagine, il resto puoi inventartelo tu se hai abbastanza immaginazione.
6. Ora tocca a "Infinite Jest", quel "manuale" da 1400 e passa pagine.
Fine. -
Δεν θέλω να γράψω κάτι για το βιβλίο αλλά ο DFW υπήρξε μεγάλος συγγραφέας και αυτό γίνεται σαφές και από αυτό το βιβλίο!
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Scritto nel 1987 e ambientato nel 1990, opera prima di un allora ventiquattrenne David Foster Wallace, il romanzo narra le strampalate vicende della ventiquattrenne Lenore Beadsman, una giovane centralinista di una casa editrice di Cleveland, Ohio, che ha:
- una famiglia di imprenditori del settore alimentare, tanto ricchi quanto disinteressati alle complicate situazioni famigliari;
- una sorta di fidanzato-datore di lavoro, Rick Vigorous, logorroico, insicuro e impotente (ma i latini non dicevano nomen omen?);
- uno psicoterapeuta inutile, incompetente e superficiale, il Dr Jay;
- un pappagallino, Vlad l'Impalatore, che improvvisamente si mette a ripetere poesie di Auden intervallate agli imbarazzanti dialoghi carnali della coinquilina di Lenore, Candy, che per rimediare gli insegnerà a recitare versetti biblici e sermoni religiosi;
- una sorella maggiore, Clarice, che per combattere la sua crisi famigliare è spronata a riprodurre in modo totalmente non spontaneo delle scenette da famiglia felice con marito e figli;
- un fratello minore, LaVache, detto l'Anticristo, un ragazzo molto intelligente ma svogliato, sempre con la battuta pronta e con una passione per le droghe;
- una bisnonna omonima, allieva di Wittgenstein, che ha formato intellettualmente la nipote con le sue concezioni filosofiche e con la sua visione del mondo, e che evade insieme ad altri ospiti da una casa di riposo.
Questi ed altri personaggi grotteschi gravitano intorno alla vita di Lenore. Personaggi esilaranti, pieni di difetti, di ossessioni e di tic, personaggi incapaci di provare empatia e svuotati dalla vita in un'America surreale ed isterica, personaggi alla ricerca di sé stessi che, benché esagerati nelle loro caratteristiche, fino quasi ad essere delle caricature, appaiono profondamente umani, risultando per questo motivo commoventi. Personaggi soli, egoisti ed egocentrici, personaggi cui non vorremmo mai assomigliare ma cui probabilmente assomigliamo, personaggi che ci fanno ridere perché vorremmo esorcizzare la paura di essere come loro. Ne consegue per Lenore, in cui autore e lettore si immedesimano facilmente, un senso di solitudine, una continua riflessione sul senso della vita e una spasmodica ricerca di una via di fuga a questa realtà inadeguata.
Non ho trovato in questo romanzo un capolavoro, mi avrebbe stupito il contrario, ma allo stesso tempo ho notato una sorprendente maturità in questa opera prima. Ho già letto Wallace in versione saggista, una versione che ho adorato per le sue notevoli doti di speculatore del pensiero e di osservatore della realtà, oltre che per il suo eclettismo e per l'abilità smisurata nella scrittura. Da questi punti di vista, anche La scopa del sistema mi ha convinto, con la sua indagine psicologica e sociale di un'America di un futuro che al tempo della pubblicazione del romanzo sarebbe stato prossimo a venire.
Lo stile di Wallace è ipertrofico, ramificato e digressivo, non adatto agli amanti del minimalismo e della linearità. L'attenzione per il dettaglio ed il gioco continuo con le parole rendono la lettura divertente, ma a patto di un mantenere sempre alto il livello di attenzione. Ho amato moltissimo la capacità di delineare i personaggi tramite le loro descrizioni dettagliate e barocche, ma soprattutto tramite il loro linguaggio: in effetti, Wallace è maestro insuperato nel costruire i dialoghi, così realistici e appaganti per il lettore, così veri e realistici che sembrano ascoltati dal vivo. Inoltre, vale la pena leggere La scopa del sistema per le riflessioni che essa provoca durante la lettura: ma, mio DIO (Deserto Incommensurabile dell'Ohio), è possibile che davvero le persone siano quello che esse dicono, che il linguaggio coincida con la realtà, che le parole realizzino le cose? Leggendo questo romanzo si arriva quasi a crederlo... e sì, caro DFW, tu con le parole ci sai proprio fare, tu vai proprio pazzo per le parole... forse anche io lo sto diventando! -
Non sono sicura di ciò che ho letto e posso dire solo una cosa con certezza: non ho mai letto qualcosa di simile. Non penso che al mondo esista un altro scrittore come lo è stato David Foster Wallace, non credo di aver mai letto descrizioni tanto particolari; DFW riesce a descrivere quelle sensazioni che non pensavo potessero essere messe per iscritto, riesce a descrivere alla perfezione cose che noi percepiamo solamente, cose sussurrate.
"Che dire, dunque, di Lenore, dei capelli di Lenore? Sono capelli in sé e di per sé di tutti i colori - biondi e rossi e corvini e ramati - ma che determinano un compromesso ottico esteriore tale da farli risultare complessivamente, e tranne per fulminei bagliori registrabili solo mediante coda dell'occhio, banalmente castani. Capelli che vengono giù lisci seguendo la dolce curva delle guance fin sotto il mento, dove quasi si ricongiungono, come fragili mandibole di insetto rapace. Oh, se quei capelli sanno mordere. Di quei capelli io conosco il morso."
Come può una descrizione del genere non affascinarti e lasciarti senza parole?
La trama di questo romanzo passa in secondo piano e questo grazie all'abilità di DFW di caratterizzare i suoi personaggi in modo esagerato, grottesco, e alla sua capacità di inserire all'interno di questa crescente follia dei temi estremamente complicati e delicati, come la volontà di decidere per se stessi, la ricerca della propria identità, l'importanza delle parole che rendono vere anche cose che potrebbero non esserlo e il rapporto con l'Altro.
In questo romanzo troviamo di tutto: filosofia, spunti di riflessione, situazioni assurde.
È il mio primo romanzo di Wallace e spero di approcciarmi presto anche ai saggi e ai racconti! -
David Foster Wallace was once quoted as saying "The Broom Of The System seems like it was written by a very smart 14 year old". I respectfully disagree with the always self-degrading and self-conscious author (Rest In Peace). In fact, due the relative success of this novel, and his inability to utilize it properly, Wallace had a mental breakdown. The circumstances around this book, both before and after, are incredibly interesting, and regretfully, there is a whole lot of space here to talk about them. On the most basic level, he was a genius at Amherst, wrote this as a result of reading Thomas Pynchon's 'Lot 49', got published, then moved to Arizona and all his professors were realists, therefore hated his work, etc. No one ever accused David Foster Wallace of being boring.
Regardless of aforementioned knowledge that I have because a full on intellectual crush on the now deceased David Foster Wallace, I absolutely loved this book. Easily my favorite debut novel of almost any writer. To explain fully why I did, I will have to start from the beginning of my readings of his works.
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, a collection of short stories, was my first exposure to this wonderfully creative man. The collection made me double take more than once. I would read a page, and then have to read it again. He was literally, like nothing I had ever read before. Undoubtedly, comparisons to Thomas Pynchon will come, Nabokov and others as well. However, I entirely disagreed. With this collection, he entirely set himself apart from any other writer, contemporary or historically. Admittedly, I did struggle through a few of the stories. In fact, I almost set it down a few times due to the sheer verbosity of Mr. Wallace. Yet, it was all worth it, because he hooked me. I decided to next read some of his non-fiction.
Upon searching around Goodreads and Google, I decided my next Wallace creation was going to be Consider The Lobster And Other Essays. All that can be said about this collection has already been said. Wonderfully original, thought provoking on every subject from biographies about literary giant Fyodor Dostoevsky to weather boiling lobsters alive is cruel, or the only way to do. He can make you laugh incredibly hard, or put you in a self-reflective state you didn't even know existed. And this on an essay about McCain on the campaign trail!
I live in a largely literary home, so I of course, told my Mom about David Foster Wallace. She isn't a fan of short stories, or of non-fiction. She tried A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again but couldn't get into it. That left her with Infinite Jest or The Broom Of The System. Since TBOFS (as it will henceforth be referred to as) came first and is much shorter, she choose to start off with David Foster Wallace's first published work. She ended up flying through the novel in about 3 days and told me I absolutely had to read it.
And of course I did. To call this novel any sort of superlative that means 'Brilliant', just isn't enough. The amount of concentration and just inherent intense cranial activity is astounding. The novel starts with 3 girls smoking a joint in a dorm room, and getting barged in on by some football playing jocks; by the end of the novel, you know exactly why DFW employs this story. I really don't want to spoil too much, but I can tell you that this book doesn't disappoint. He connects things in a way that just kind of makes you have to just chuckle at his brilliance and not feel to bad that you wern't born with a brain like his.
The actual plot line begins chapter 3 in a somewhat futuristic Cleveland, with Lenore Beadsman finding out her great-grandmother Lenore Beadsman has run away from her nursing home. The novel essentially revolves around Lenore's quest to find her grandmother, her relationship with her excessively neurotic, possessive and needy boyfriend Rick Vigorous, and her talking parrot who eventually ends up on a Christian television show. Highlights include the couples joint psychologist who is a fraud, is terribly unethical, and obsessed with hygiene-disorder. The short stories within the stories are often pretty good as well, I particularly enjoyed the one with the woman who has a toad living in her neck. The concept of a desert built outside of Cleveland (The Great Ohio Desert, or G.O.D. Yes, he is that clever) is so hilarious. These corporate types and a governor decide the people need to get back to nature; so they artificially manufacture the desert as a tourist trap.
The ultimate accomplishment of the book though, is Wallace's talent for playing with with the nature of linguistics. He took his philosophy major ideas, using Wittgenstein as a jumping block, and took off with it. His main character isn't sure if they are real. Lenore's great-grandmother was a student of said philosopher and indoctrinates Lenore with her 'knowledge' R.V is a terrible writer at a publishing firm that doesn't publish. Her parrot talks and shouts Auden, along with the Bible. The entire novel revolves around words and their implications.
Really, so much can be said about this novel that I can't begin to cover it here. I was challenged, but I was entertained as well. Wallace proves that these things are not mutually exclusive I read this book in two sittings and was at no point, bored or distracted. I'm very glad I read this before "Infinite Jest" because I think it will make it a lot easier to get into how he plots his mind over a large area of space, since most of his other stuff only clocks in at tops, 100 pages. One thing that was interesting about this work was the lack of his almost-trademarked over-usage of footnotes and endnotes. Almost disconcerting to read his work all the way through without have to go to the end of the page and back up.
I would recommend that everyone read this before Infinite Jest; it has been my experience that if you read an authors not-as-seminal work before their greatest novel, you will always get more out of it. Not only will you understand Wallace better as a writer, but you will enjoy possibly the greatest novel of any post-postmodernist contemporary writer to date. Heed this review, please, because, I like Rick Vigorous am a man of my
(Yes I meant to leave it out. If you read the book, you'll see why I did) -
Allora. Parce sepulto, diceva quello. E io lo parco il sepulto, eccome se lo parco. La prima volta che ho sentito parlare di David Foster Wallace è stata quando è morto. Prima, mai. E per qualche giorno mi era sembrato che non averlo letto - dai, non hai letto Infinite Jest? E neanche La scopa del sistema? - fosse una terribile colpa da espiare al più presto. Insomma, devo confessare che ero un po' preoccupato: questo signore americano qua, un mezzo genio mezzo drogato mezzo alcolizzato mezzo depresso mezzo matto, si è suicidato a quarantasei anni nella mia più totale inconsapevolezza. Un tarlo lo divorava dall’interno, hanno scritto i migliori coccodrillisti, e io felice e contento, indifferente ai suoi drammi. Che vergogna. Per espiare sono corso in libreria e ho preso un suo libro a caso – Oblio – perché di solito faccio così: quando voglio iniziare un autore o parto cronologicamente o parto con un libro a caso. A rifletterci bene, non è che ci siano altri modi, ma mi piace pensare di mettere in pratica sagaci strategie. Sono tornato a casa, ho letto un racconto, forse due, al limite tre, e mi sono detto che no, non ero pronto per la superba scrittura del maestro contemporaneo. Nel frattempo la moda DFW un po’ è scemata. Gli articoli celebrativi sono diminuiti e insomma, il nostro genio è stato un po’ meno considerato. Ma sempre genio è rimasto: le poche righe apparse qua e là sulla stampa tenevano in gran considerazione la sua opera. Per tacere, poi, delle recensioni entusiaste dei lettori su forum, blog e social network. Allora sono io, mi sono detto. Avrò sbagliato libro, ho provato a spiegarmi. Qua bisogna tentare di nuovo, mi sono convinto. Stavolta parto in ordine, ho infine deciso. Ho preso in mano La scopa del sistema, ben consapevole di trovarmi di fronte all’opera struggente di un formidabile genio, e mi sono lasciato andare. Sarebbe stato meglio se mi fossi messo a leggere le possenti riflessioni di Christian Raimo. Non ce la faccio, proprio non capisco DFW. Una storia insulsa che nemmeno c’è, personaggi abbozzati, accennati, lasciati a metà. Artifici verbali a gogò, che poi diventano solo verbosità artificiale. Bisogna sospendere l’incredulità, e spesso pure la noia. Fuori c’è un bel sole, in tv c’è la Premier League, le figlie chiamano, la moglie pure. Ma chi me lo fa fare a me? Un libro mi deve prima di tutto divertire. E per divertirmi deve soddisfare due condizioni principali: ci deve essere una storia e lo scrittore deve comparire il meno possibile. Qua la storia… tu c’hai capito qualcosa? E il narratore è onnipresente, ok DFW sei bravo bravissimo, però spostati, lèvati, ho capito che ci tieni tanto a mostrarmi quanto sia bello e forte e figo, fammi leggere il libro però. Non hai capito, dice quello, DFW scrive una storia senza senso perché il mondo è senza senso, la vita è senza senso, tutto è senza senso. Più di cinquecento pagine per sostenere una roba che Vasco Rossi, dico Vasco Rossi, ha riassunto in un mirabile verso: questa storia una senso non ce l’ha... Va bene da ragazzino, quando ogni autore un po’ audace ti fa scoprire delle cose nuove, però Cecco Angiolieri si studia a quattordici anni, dopo c’è anche dell’altro. Dopo si cresce e si va avanti e che la vita non abbia senso, caro adolescente brufoloso, lo abbiamo capito già da un pezzo. Se proprio devi continuare a ripeterlo, trova almeno un modo un po’ originale per farlo. Per esempio con un romanzo. O con una storia. Io non capisco come possa entusiasmare questa letteratura qua. È l’equivalente affettato e intelligente dei libri Harmony. È un’enorme presa per il culo in cui addetti ai lavori e lettori si trascinano estasiati, contenti di far parte di qualcosa che poco comprendono ma che bisogna apprezzare per partito preso. Una specie di meccanismo identitario: ho letto DFW e ne capisco di letteratura; ho letto DFW e accidenti se ne so; ho letto DFW e l’America contemporanea ora ve la spiego io. E se invece non lo leggiamo e capiamo siamo solo dei rozzi bifolchi, come Remo e Augusta alla Biennale di Venezia. Il tutto, ovviamente, in attesa che un redivivo Fantozzi si alzi in piedi e urli ai quattro venti che siamo di fronte solo all’ennesima cagata pazzesca.
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Part 1
Judith Prietht. Once I sounded it out I hated her so much. DFW’s humor is something I haven't found anywhere else: its weirdness, the build up to the jokes, and the LOLZ. The therapist scenes were the hardest I’ve laughed at a book since the Eschaton debacle.
Another thing DFW brings to the table is his descriptive writing which immediately embeds me into the scene,
The hair hangs in bangs, and the sides curve down past Lenore’s cheeks and nearly meet in points below her chin, like the brittle jaws of an insect of prey. Oh, the hair can bite. I’ve been bitten by the hair.
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Barstools make me feel a bit childish, because my feet do not quite reach the supports; they dangle, and sometimes swing, and my thighs plump out from the weight of the dangling and swinging my legs, and my feet sometimes go to sleep.
On the down side, the characters were hard to root for. They each have a personality controlled by a quirk or addiction that made them feel cold, and the story at times feel distant. Situations like the opening scene still worked and got my heart rate up, but overall it was hard to connect with anyone and I had to push through some parts.
The closest thing I can compare it to is ‘Westworld’; interesting premise but stakes for the characters are missing.
The Wittgenstein stuff doesn't overpower too much, DFW played around with signs whose definitions could only be made through their use in language. “Lenore Beadsman,” a name, is the simplest form of a sign and we only know which Lenore Beadsman (great grandma or protagonist) is being talked about through its use in language.
Also, several companies were sharing the same phone number, so again one sign (a phone number) whose meaning is formed through its use in language; in this case, a phone conversation.
Logic poked its way in (It is true that he was both happy and sad at Amherst) and among a few other Wittgensteinian tropes, was Lenore’s form of silent expression: “…” when prompted by others to express herself. On top of being a comedy beat, the “…”, seemed like an ode to Wittgenstein’s last proposition: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Suppose Gramma tells me really convincingly that all that really exists of my life is what can be said about it?
There was also the father’s plan to feed infants with a special chemical that would allow them to speak, perhaps robbing them of their unspeakable bliss.
5/5
Part 2
We found out why the Beadsman kids were so cold: they were literally kept locked away. That helped me forgive the lack of character building but I was still a little disappointed at the detachment I felt towards everyone. Thankfully, more Dr. Jay was injected into this volume and he went 100 with his Hegel and Derrida infused analysis. Throw in a gas mask that braced his smell of “breakthrough” and you get a sense DFW wasn’t too fond of therapists, which is great for us because it was so damn funny.
My main problem with Part 2 was that as soon as I got invested into a scene, a new scene would start and I’d have no idea who was who, or what was going on. It dragged on my interest and caused me to put the book away for later.
Dr. Jay scenes: 5/5
Everything else: 2.5/5
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Their were a few lessons DFW was trying to build. One was connected by philosophy, one by the theme of self/other, and another by a message (the family theater scene was a bit much) for the need to build a healthy balance between ourselves and our community, instead of isolation and co-dependency.
At times it was a little weird to have a twenty-four-year-old lecture me on life lessons, but overall I didn't mind it because a) it was the Truth and b) it’s DFW.
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If there’s nothing about me but what can be said about me, what separates me from this lady in this story Rick got who eats junk food and gains weight and squashes her child in her sleep? She’s exactly what’s said about her, right? Nothing more at all. And same with me, seems like.
Gramma says she’s going to show me how a life is words and nothing else. Gramma says words can kill and create. Everything. -
" E il mio presente scrosciò e schiumò nel mio passato, e gorgogliò via."
ok, pronti? via
"puoi fidarti di me, sono un uomo di..."
Lenore ha una nonna che è scappata dalla clinica, una nonna studiosa di Wittgenstein, poi ha un uccellino Vlad L'Impalatore, che parla a vanvera e un fidanzato, non fidanzato, un amico, Rick Vigorous, di Frequent & Vigorous, che è poco vigorous e ancora meno frequent!
poi c'è la fuga di nonna e amiche, papà che va a Corfù, sorelle e fratelli, e infine i racconti di Rick
ce n'è abbastanza per tre di romanzi
e tutti postmoderni...
"Mettiamo che Nonna mi abbia detto in maniera parecchio convincente che tutto ciò che davvero esiste della mia vita è limitato a quello che se ne può raccontare.
Be', credo che non sia esattamente che la vita va raccontata anziché vissuta; è piuttosto che la vita è il suo racconto, e che in me non c'è niente che non sia o raccontato o raccontabile. Ma se è davvero così, allora che differenza c'è, perché vivere?"
"E il mio presente scrosciò e schiumò nel mio passato, e gorgogliò via."
" – Lenore, il fatto è che io ti amo. Lo sai. Ogni fibra del mio essere ama ogni fibra del tuo essere. Il pensiero di ignorare cose che ti riguardano e che ti angustiano mi fa lacrimar sangue col dorso degli occhi.
– Gran bella immagine. Ecco, bravo, assaggia la tua bistecca. Dicevi di avere una fame che ti saresti mangiato un cavallo. – ...
– Colpisce nel segno?
– Il mio segno vacilla sotto l’impeto del colpo. E adesso consentimi di insistere affinché tu me lo dica."
"La sorella di Lenore è strepitosamente bella, per chi ami il tipo strepitosamente bella, piena com’è di morbidi capelli color miele e di occhi blu e di poppe da arrembaggio; solo che è presuntuosa e seriosa e noiosa, e il suo equilibrio e il suo senso dei valori dipendono terribilmente (e sono sgradevolmente ignari di dipendere terribilmente) dall’Ultima Moda Sociale."
" - Il racconto riguarda un tale che ci viene presentato come il piú straordinario e rinomato dentista teorico del ventesimo secolo.
– Dentista teorico?
– Uno studioso specializzato in odontoiatria teorica e in ricerche teoriche di altissimo livello basate su casi empirici attinenti tutto ciò che abbia a che fare coi denti.
– Meraviglioso.
– Ti ricordi di quel dolcificante che tempo fa era praticamente onnipresente? Il SupraSweet? Quello che sparí di colpo dagli scaffali dei supermercati quando scoprirono che faceva nascere bambini con le antenne e i denti da vampiro?
– Tu che dici, me lo ricordo?
– Ecco, il dentista teorico in questione ci viene presentato come colui che avrebbe risolto il problema antenne/denti-davampiro, partendo appunto dall’aspetto denti e risalendo sino alla responsabilità dell’ubiquo e micidiale dolcificante."
"Vengo scaraventato all’indietro dalla veemenza dell’odore di breccia."
