The Broom of the System 
by 

David Foster Wallace

 

Critical Problems on the Line

Could it be that Lenore Beadsman and Leopold Bloom have more in common than just their initials (Broom/Bloom, get the clue?)? Both are engaged in a fairly closely detailed tour of their respective cities. Both are described in and through a variety of literary styles, often comedic, digressions, and innovations. Both exist in order to demonstrate points about language as much as to carry the narrative along. And the auxiliary characters to both are a pretty rum lot of social freaks, incipient psychopaths, and grasping businessmen, sometimes simultaneously. I mean come on. How much proof do you need. Somebody’s a plagiarist, so’ ‘nuff.

Well no. Maybe these are coincidences. Leopold exists in a down to earth descriptive world that Lenore simply doesn’t share. Leoplod encounters genuine streets and authentic shops and pubs (look ‘em up!). Lenore exists in a universe that sustains corporate entities like Hunt & Peck, Stonecipheco, Rummage and Naw, or Frequent & Vigorous, the latter being merely a tax dodge masquerading as a publisher. These simply don’t exist in the telephone directory, much less Google maps. None of your modernist realism there. No way, José.

Then again, there is the determinism versus free will thing going on in both. And the associated questions of religion. Some subjects are just untalkaboutable as Leopold and Lenore each might say. Does that make these subjects spiritual, or nonsense, or maybe even Catholic? Not to mention the suggestions in the text that words aren’t often used in ‘official’ ways, in fact that there may be no official ways at all. Oh, and there’s lot of odd sex involved too. You’ve got to admit that’s a pretty creepy connection, all this primitive non-verbal stuff. That’s code, man, and no mistake.

Yeah, but there sure isn’t a lot of this telephone mixup business that Leopold ever had to deal with. I forget, did he even have a telephone? But Lenore finds it a major headache; it’s sort of central to her life. In fact her whole town suffers; it’s like a running joke. So Cleveland can’t be Dublin; Lake Erie ain’t the River Liffey no matter what anyone says to the contrary. And what would Lionel know about baby food, toxic or not? Bupkis is what Leopold would know about baby food. But Lenore was presumably brought up on the stuff and it’ll sure be a large part of her future. And there wasn’t even one cockatiel in Leoplold’s’s life, nowhere, ever. 

So I think I’m entitled to make a firm conclusion about the state of affairs here. Wallace never heard of Joyce. There, I’ve said it. I’m proud to be out of the closet. And for all those critics out there who never mentioned the two together, you left an important, if much needed, gap in the market to be filled. Remember: You read it here first