The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace, Failures of Language (and Excess)
Published 2024-07-20
0:00 Introduction
2:03 Wallace on Language
11:57 Wallace's Excess
15:10 Metaphors Succeed and Fail
18:35 Influences, Recommended if You Like
Recommended if you like:
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Girl with Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
Nine Stories by JD Salinger
Franny & Zooey by JD Salinger
Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters & Seymour: an Introduction by JD Salinger
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The Recognitions by William Gaddis
Omensetter's Luck by William Gass
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges
On Interpretation by Aristotle
Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Modal Logic by Cocciarella and Freund
Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
Stories of Donald Barthelme
The Names by Don DeLillo
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami Haruki, my discussion: • Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of...
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Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
Other Men's Daughters by Richard Stern
The Ginger Man by JP Donleavy
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All Comments (4)
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DFW is of my generation exactly. In college I took a short story writing class, and that excess of detail was exactly what the teacher was pushing, and my finished piece strove for that — something about dental floss as I recall. It sounds like you are saying that DFW’s insights into language and communication are those typical of what you would expect a 25 year old to have.
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There is a janitor named Ludwig who has a bad habit of showing up late to work each day. Yesterday, he arrived late and said to his boss, “What happens when a duck flies upside down? It quacks up!” “Early again,” muttered his boss.
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I read this decades ago. My memory is that it was a very smirky novel.
