The Broom of the System

David Foster Wallace Duke Riley First published 1987

About this book

Lenore Beadsman, a 24-year-old telephone switchboard operator who gets caught in the middle of a Cleveland-based character drama. In Wallace's typically offbeat style, Lenore navigates three separate crises: her great-grandmother's escape from a nursing home, a neurotic boyfriend, and a suddenly vocal pet cockatiel. The controlling idea surrounding all of these crises is the use of words and symbols to define a person.

Subjects

  • cleveland (ohio), fiction
  • fiction
  • fiction, humorous
  • fiction, humorous, general
  • grandmothers
  • grandparents, fiction
  • missing persons
  • missing persons, fiction
  • popular culture
  • young women
  • young women, fiction