Publisher, Hachette Audio (June 2010)

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The "dazzling, exhilarating" (San Francisco Chronicle) debut novel from the bestselling author of Infinite Jest, available for the first time as an audiobook.

At the center of The Broom of the System is the betwitching (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.

About the Author: David Foster Wallace is the author of Infinite Jest, The Broom of the System, and Girl With Curious Hair. His essays and stories have appeared in Harper's, The New Yorker, Playboy, Paris Review, Conjunctions, Premiere, Tennis, The Missouri Review, and The Review of Contemporary Fiction. Wallace has received the Whiting Award, the Lannan Award for Fiction, the Paris Review Prize for humor, the QPB Joe Savago New Voices Award, and an O. Henry Award.

David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008

On those rare occasions that David Wallace visited our offices in New York City, execs lined up to clap him on the shoulder and shake his hand—one of the many forms of acclaim that made David very, very uncomfortable. He would deflect compliments firmly and turn the conversation to praising the editorial or publicity assistant he had most recently spent hours on the phone with.

Everyone who worked with David has used the word “kind” in describing him. He never failed to be kind, to acknowledge work done on his behalf—copyediting single-spaced manuscript pages, laying out pages with notes embedded in notes, booking tours for an ardent tobacco-chewer with particular needs. He wanted the people he met to know him for who he was, not as a scarily giant intellect or as a bandanna-clad lit phenom. He succeeded completely.

Among the most moving notes arriving here recently have been those from young editors and agents who wrote to say that David Foster Wallace’s writing was a beacon to them. The idea that they might one day have a hand in bringing work this original and mind-opening and exciting to readers inspired them and drew them to the book business. We will always be grateful that we had the extraordinary opportunity of working with him and knowing him. We will miss him very much.