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The Broom of the System - Community Reviews back

by David Foster Wallace
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"So it goes."
"So it goes." rated it 6 years ago
Years ago (elsewhere) I gave this five stars. When I reread it this week, I downgraded it to four and just now changed it back halfway. Here's why: A quote from DT Max's biography puts this pretty well. The publisher on the reason they took it: Broom was different, that it used postmodernism in new ...
Kaethe
Kaethe rated it 8 years ago
19891993Weird and wonderful. One of three novels that convinced me not to pursue an MFA. I couldn't be that funny, or strange, or creative, although I did dress like Lenore for a while, well, sometimes. 2016 It's never the same book twice. The book I read as a recent college grad, who was wonde...
The Bookchemist
The Bookchemist rated it 11 years ago
Dealing with contemporary entertainment, modern-days Western society, linguistic philosophy, interpersonal relationships and religious birds, The Broom of the System is one of those books you'll never forget, a novel that will stay in the back of your mind forever - going on teaching its lesson in s...
Infinite Joe
Infinite Joe rated it 11 years ago
Yes, apparently I'm infatuated with David Foster Wallace, who I say again writes like nobody I have ever read before, unless of course you count Thomas Pynchon, although Pynchon does it in a more opposite, uninteresting, and mind-numbingly drivel-ous sort of way, at least judging from Gravity's Rain...
Never Read Passively
Never Read Passively rated it 11 years ago
The best part of the book, and by telling you this, I am not really giving anything away, at least nothing that is pertinent to the plot of the book, is that there is a man-made black sand desert in Ohio, near Caldwell, Ohio, the Great Ohio Desert, where people go wandering, hiking, hiding, resolvin...
Amadan na Briona
Amadan na Briona rated it 12 years ago
I am not sure how to describe this... thing I read. David Foster Wallace was supposed to be some sort of sublime genius. I thought The Broom of the System was trying way too hard to be sublime and ingenuous, and while there were plenty of clever bits, it was clever bits and characters tossed around ...
wealhtheow
wealhtheow rated it 12 years ago
Catalyzed by a violent allergic reaction to Holden Caufield, I avoid pretty much all modern "literary" fiction. If it's got spaceships, countries ruled by unicorns, or a mysterious death, I am there--otherwise, not so much. But the review MyFleshSingsOut wrote is so fantastic that I find myself in...
Readundant
Readundant rated it 13 years ago
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 ...
Kaethe
Kaethe rated it 36 years ago
Also Jan 1, 1993Weird and wonderful. One of three novels that convinced me not to pursue an MFA. I couldn't be that funny, or strange, or creative, although I did dress like Lenore for a while, well, sometimes.
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