The remarkable debut novel from the bestselling author of Infinite Jest explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality. First published in 1987, now available in a brand-new paperback edition. "Daring, hilarious ... a zany picaresque adventure of contemporary America run amok." --New York Times 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. This debut novel from one of the most innovative writers of our generation is fiercely intelligent and wildly entertaining.