The Broom of the System

It's continually astonishing that Wallace wrote this when he was the age I am now; the voice is intimidatingly hyper-intelligent and verbose. I enjoyed this at first until about a third of the way in, when I could feel the many crisscrossing and interconnecting narratives slipping from my grasp. I was constantly asking myself "Who is this character supposed to be again?" It's a shame, because I really wanted to like this, and I want to return to it again in the future when I can devote enough brainpower toward understanding just what the hell it's actually about.

** spoiler alert ** Okay, so this was definitely something. DFW's debut novel is much more accessible than Infinite Jest and The Pale King, both of which I've started and not finished (although enjoyed). It's a bit more linear than those two as well. It's fairly humorous, almost satirical at some points, and spans a lot of topics, from corporate modernization to televangelism to aspirational college-age writers to the six degrees of seperation. Overall I'd say it was great, but the ending is weird, like it wasn't finished, literally: it ends in the middle of a sentence. Also, I kept thinking of The Office (the US version), and picturing Julie as Angela and Peter Abbot as Roy, and Rick seems like Alvy Singer (Annie Hall) meets Humbert Humbert.

Yes!

Realistically, this is a 4.5 star rating from me, because it's so much better than other 4-star reads, but doesn't quite attain the absolute, all-rounded, satisfactory perfection of a 5-star book. I don't even really know what to say right now. I'm still sort of just taking it all in...processing the whole rollercoaster-ride of mind-bending mirth and trying to get a few things straight in my head. This book is like...you know when you see a mirror reflected in another mirror directly opposite it, and the reflections continue on to infinity? Well if you think of that phenomenon, only instead apply it to a walled in square room (maybe an elevator?) with mirrored walls on all sides...or perhaps even one of those fateful halls of mirrors you see at carnivals and fairs (much like the one where Clarice had her purse stolen) and just imagine the image of the writer DFW appearing, then reappearing as he is reflected and refracted and shattered into a million tiny pieces that go on forever, constantly making you wonder if what you're seeing is the real person...or just a broken and thinly-spread facsimile of them...looking back at you in every mirrored surface. That's kind of what this book is. It's one emotionally fraught & fragile, yet insanely intelligent and articulate, young man, weaving pieces of his splintered personal into this crazy tapestry of larger than life characters, who are either suffering as a result of sharing the same crippling mental health issues as the author, or who are ascending because of some inherent quality he wants for himself to possess, while on a sort of vaguely sci-fi/speculative-fiction romp that oozes subtext, deeper meaning and required further reading on every page. And if all that sounds out there and intangible, trust me, this book is very firmly grounded in the cynical yet wittily observant humour we've come to expect. It really is silly, laugh-out-loud funny in places, cleverly & knowingly "in-joke" amusing in others, but utterly entertaining throughout. Is it perfect? Hell no. But then I challenge you to come up with a better effort aged 24 and dealing with a sickening combination of serious mental illness, and utter genius (although where one ends and the other begins, is anyone's guess). The ending is a little too ambiguous for my liking - I'm not saying I want everything tied up in a bow and handed to me on a silver platter labelled "for your ease of intellectual digestion", but a little more actual resolution to the system whose failures appeared to be potentially diagnosed & fixed. I also wish I could spend more time with this particular coterie of characters who despite their absurd peccadilloes still felt real and believable...if only because they feel like people I've encountered merely only in dreams. My thoughts are still all over the place, coming together and coalescing the way books like this do over time...when you've really had a chance to work it all out some. But I loved every minute of it. I can barely remember the first time I read it - probably because the first time around it'd been dipped in and out of, here and there, whilst working some unsociable hours and unable to dedicate the time, effort and concentration needed to not just follow the storyline, but actually digest it along with the infinite number of references to things sometimes beyond my ken. It's just funny and wild and well worth settling down with if you have a Sunday spare to dedicate to it. Even now as I close the final page, I'm left wondering about all the parts I've highlighted and annotated and need to go back an investigate further. I guess if you're somewhat on the fence about reading Infinite Jest, you'd probably do well to read TBOTS first and get a real taste of the way Wallace's mind worked. It's about half the length of IJ and nowhere near as complex, but reading TBOTS would be a good barometer of sorts by which to judge your likelihood of a much longer, more vastly sprawling and insanely intertwined chunker like IJ. I know this review will make little sense to those who have yet to read TBOTS, but if you do decide to take the plunge, I doubt you'll find yourself regretting to invest a little time with Dave and his insane in the membrane (insane in the brain) world of the wackadoodle. (Now I need a drink)