David Foster Wallace

The remarkable debut novel from the bestselling author of Infinite Jest, first published when David Foster Wallace was twenty-four years old, now available in a brand-new package. At the center of The Broom of the System is the bewitching-and also bewildered-heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio, which sits on the edge of a suburban wasteland: the Great Ohio Desert.
Lenore works as a switchboard attendant at a publishing firm, and in addition to her mind-numbing job, she has a few other problems. Her great-grandmother, a one-time student of Wittgenstein, has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau (and boss), editor-in-chief Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous. And her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psychobabble, Auden, and the King James Bible, which may propel him to stardom on a Christian fundamentalist television program.
Fiercely intelligent and entertaining, this debut novel from one of the most innovative writers of our generation explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality."Daring, hilarious. a zany picaresque adventure of contemporary America run amok." -New York Times