The Broom of the System

by David Foster Wallace

  “....”

  “Would you like some of my oyster stew?”

  “You know I hate oyster stew. They look like little mouths, floating in there.”

  “Surely you want more than just that tiny salad.”

  “Please don’t tell me what I want, Rick. I’ve had more than enough of that already today.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “...”

  “Is. that a Jay-reference?”

  “....”

  “Was it not a good appointment?”

  “Don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But if it’s harmed you in some emotional way ...”

  “We made a deal that we wouldn’t talk about Jay-appointments, remember?”

  “You’re so pale you’re practically transparent.”

  “Well, you can touch my chest if you want, like in that stupid story. ”

  “Pardon me?”

  “That one story, the first one you had me read? Where the old man touches the little boy to make sure he’s not a window?”

  “You didn’t care for that story? What was it called ... ?”

  “ ‘Love.’ ”

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  “I liked that other one, though. That ‘Metamorphosis for the Eighties.’ I thought it was a killer. The part when the people threw coins at the rock star on stage and they stuck in him and he died was maybe a little hokey, but overall it was deadly. I put a big asterisk on it for you.”

  “.... ”

  “You don’t want your stew anymore? I didn’t mean it about the mouths. Eat up.”

  “But you didn’t much care for the other one, then.”

  “Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought it sucked canal-water, big time.”

  “.... ”

  “Oh no, did you really like it? Am I ignorantly stomping on a good thing, that you liked?”

  “My tastes are for the moment on the back burner. I’d simply be interested to hear why you disliked it.”

  “I’m really not sure. It just seemed ... it was like you said about all the other troubled collegiate stuff. It just seemed artificial. Like the kid who wrote it was trying too hard.”

  “I see.”

  “All that stuff about, ‘And then context came in, and Fieldbaum looked bland.’ ”

  “Fieldbinder. ”

  “What?”

  “Wasn’t the protagonist’s name Fieldbinder? In the story?”

  “Right, Fieldbinder. But that stuff about context, though. Shouldn’t a story make the context that makes people do certain things and have the things be appropriate or not appropriate? A story shouldn’t just mention the exact context it’s supposed to try really to create, right?”

  “....”

  “And the writing was just so ... This one line I remember: ‘He grinned wryly.’ Grinned wryly? Who grins wryly? Nobody grins wryly, at all, except in stories. It wasn’t real at all. It was like a story about a story. I put it on Mavis’s desk with the ones about the proctologist and the snowblower.”

  “ ...”

  “But I’ll take it right back off if you liked it. You did like it, didn’t you? This means my tastes aren’t keened to the right pitch, doesn’t it?”

  “Not ... not necessarily. I’m trying to remember where I got the thing. Must have been some kid, somewhere. Troubled. Trying to remember his cover letter ...”

  “Although it was well typed, I noticed.”

  “.... ”

  “Let me just try one little smidgeon of your stew, here.”

  “Think he said it was almost like a story about a story. The narrative center being the wife’s description of the occasion on which Costigan touched the son.... Almost a story about the way a story waits and waits but never dies, can always come back, even after ostensible characters have long since departed the real scene.”

  “Really not all that bad.”

  “What?”

  “The broth is pretty good. Creamy. I guess it’s just the oysters I don’t like.”

  “I seem to remember he said he conceived it as a story of neighborhood obsession. About how sometimes neighbors can become obsessed with other neighbors, even children, and perhaps even peer into their bedrooms across the fence from their dens ... but how it’s usually impossible for the respective neighbors to know about such things, because each neighbor is shut away inside his own property, his house, surrounded by a fence. Locked away. Everything meaningful both good-meaningful and bad-meaningful, kept private.”

  “.... ”

  “Except that ocasionally the Private leaked out, every once in a while, and became Incident. And that perceived Incident became Story. And that Story endured, in Mind, even behind and within the isolating membrane of house and property and fence that surrounded and isolated each individual suburb-resident.”

  “Membrane?”

  “Sorry. Poor choice of word. I’m sure I’ll hear it often enough this afternoon.”

  “You see Jay this afternoon?”

  “I told you that yesterday. We discussed it yesterday.”

  “....”

  “Is there some reason why you’d like me not to see him today?”

  “....”

  “And that, as I recall, some of the references in the story, the bird business, the burning house, the grinning-wryly business, had to do with a context created by a larger narrative system of which this piece was a part.”

  “Well you can imagine I found the bird stuff upsetting. Especially about its being dead. Which Vlad the Impaler now in effect is, at least as far as I’m concerned, at least for a while.”

  “He was on television last night, I’m told. Apparently Sykes’s show airs every single evening.”

  “I know. Candy watched him last night. I guess he was really good. She said Sykes looked like he was in ecstasies.”

  “You didn’t watch it?”

  “Candy watched it at Mr. Allied’s. He’s got cable. We don’t get cable, at the Tissaws‘. Their house isn’t hooked up. Mrs. Tissaw usually just watches Oral Roberts on a regular channel. Actually the whole East Corinth-cable story is pretty unhappy, because the cable company and Dad are still—”

  “Where were you?”

  “What?”

  “Where were you last night?”

  “Oh, God, what all did I do. I went for a walk for a while. Watched some of a softball game at the park. They were pitching fast. I like it when they pitch fast. I talked to Dad on the phone about the LaVache thing for what turned out to be a long time. And then I went to sleep early. I did read some more of the stories, though. I read—”

  “Where was Lang, then, I wonder.”

  “....”

  “You’re awfully pale.”

  “Why do you think I’d know where Lang was?”

  “I was just thinking out loud.”

  “I heard a definite tone.”

  “You heard nothing but your own imagination.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What is wrong with you, Lenore? Darling I swear I meant nothing at all.”

  “....”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “....”

  “Was the Fieldbinder piece that awful? Is that it?”

  “A story can’t make you pale, or sick, Rick. That thing wasn’t even good enough in my opinion to have any effect on me, good or bad, at all.”

  “Then what is it, Lenore?”

  “....”

  “Shall we just go? Norman has been tending to come in here, a lot; for lunches, at about this time, so perhaps—”

  “And now what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “My God, it meant nothing! I just thought you’d want to avoid seeing him, is all.”

  “How does he even get in here anymore?”

  “Apparently he simply establishes himself on the sidewalk. Newspapers are laid down. Things are brought to him in huge industrial containers. It’s not a pretty sight.”

/>   “I guess we should go, then. I don’t want to have to try to get past him.”

  “The Bombardini Company vice presidents are deeply worried. They claim in all seriousness that Norman is trying to eat himself to death.”

  “Or everybody else to death.”

  “Surely you don’t take those pathetic plans he was spinning seriously.”

  “Don’t presume to tell me what I take seriously and don’t take seriously, Rick.”

  “Good Lord, what is the matter with you?”

  “.... ”

  “Listen.... Listen to that.”

  “....”

  “Hear it?”

  “I do hear something. It’s not thunder, is it?”

  “Can’t be. Sun’s shining out past the shadow, see? I’m afraid I sense impending Norman.”

  “We better go. You better finish your mouths.”

  “Are you absolutely sure you’re all right?”

  “....”

  /d/

  At work, Candy Mandible was smoking and sipping a Tab and enjoying Judith Prietht’s lunch break. Judith had been entering the too-much range. Today she had brought baggies full of sugar cookies in the shapes of cats and birds for Lenore and Candy. Judith was getting to be a real pain in the ass.

  The console began beeping. Candy Started In and amused herself for a minute with a hoarse man wanting to know whether she preferred rough banisters to smooth banisters. Then she handled the next call.

  “Frequent and Vigorous,” she said.

  “Who?” said a voice.

  “Frequent and Vigorous Publishing, Inc., may I help you,” Candy said, rolling her eyes.

  “Christ, I thought I’d never get through,” the voice said. “Miss, did you know your phones are all fouled up?”

  “There’ve been rumors to that effect, ma‘am. Can I help you with something?” Candy took some Tab, around the mouthpiece. She tried to place the voice on the phone. The voice sounded vaguely familiar.

  “To whom am I speaking, please,” said the voice.

  “This is Ms. Mandible, a Frequent and Vigorous operator,” said Candy Mandible.

  “Ms. Mandible, I’m calling to see first whether you have a co-worker there, a Ms. Lenore Beadsman,” said the voice.

  “Yes, we do,” said Candy. “Can I take a message for you.” She reached for the Legitimate Call Log.

  “And second to see whether you also have a new employee there, a Mr. Lang,” said the voice. “I think he’s in the babyfood department, whatever that means.”

  “Ma‘am whom shall I say is calling?” Candy said, opening the Log.

  “This is Mrs. Andrew Sealander Lang, of New York,” said the voice.

  Candy looked at the console, the circuit buttons in their gelatins of light.

  “Hello?” the voice said.

  “Yes, hello,” said Candy.

  “Is my husband there, is what I need to know.”

  “I believe he is with the firm at the present time, ma‘am, yes,” said Candy. “Shall I transfer you to his temporary office?”

  “Does he have a direct number there?”

  “All individual transfers are done through me at the switchboard, ma‘am. Please hold on.” Candy looked at the switchboard directory, got the number, Started In again, and transferred the call, just as Judith Prietht slouched wearily back into the cubicle.

  “What’s happening, Candy?” Judith made a smile and changed her shoes for the slippers beneath her counter.

  “Just fine,” Candy said, still staring at the lights in the console, reaching again for her Tab.

  /e/

  PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF RAP-SESSION IN THE OFFICE OF DR. CURTIS JAY, PH.D., THURSDAY, 9 SEPTEMBER 1990. PARTICIPANTS: DR. CURTIS JAY AND MR. RICK VIGOROUS, AGE 42, FILE NUMBER 744-25-4291.

  DR. JAY: So as I see it we have three major and not unrelated themes for discussion. Dream. You. Lenore.

  MR. RICK VIGOROUS: Preferably the latter. What did you do to her in here, today? She looked simply awful at lunch.

  DR. JAY: No pain, no gain. Enormous, enormous strides, today. Breakthrough positively looming on the emotional horizon. And of course there is the Lang issue.

  RICK: The Lang issue?

  JAY: The young man from your dream?

  RICK: Why is he an issue outside the confines of the dream?

  JAY: Who said he was?

  RICK: You did.

  JAY: Did I? I don’t really recall explicitly saying that.

  RICK: What an ass-pain you are.

  Dr. Jay pauses.

  RICK: I officially demand to know how and why Lang is an issue. JAY: You said the Lang dream made you wake up screaming.

  RICK,. Streaming.

  JAY: Watch me exercise self-control.

  Rick Vigorous pauses.

  JAY: Penis problems, still. Am I right?

  RICK: Listen to this. I’m amazed. Last time I was here you said “penis shmenis.”

  JAY: But I sense intuitively that Lang has become for you the Other, no? The Other in reference to whom you choose to understand Self, in all its perceived inadequacy?

  RICK: I don’t know. What, did Lenore mention Lang to you?

  JAY: Why did you bring this person back to Cleveland with you, if he upsets you so?

  RICK: I really do not know. We met in our old fraternity bar. Things were strange. Affinities seemed to be jutting out everywhere. He simply seemed to fit in. To click.

  JAY: So you brought him within your network.

  RICK: I hate to sound like a mutual acquaintance of ours, but somehow

  I felt I had little choice. It was as though a context was created in which it would have been inappropriate not to bring him inside.

  JAY: Inside?

  RICK: Into the nexus of my professional and emotional life.

  JAY: I see. And what about Lenore? Is Lenore “inside,” to continue your use of a term positively dripping with Blentnerian connotations? RICK: I hope that she will be someday.

  JAY: A conspicuous hmmm. And you, Rick. Are you “inside,” in the context of Lenore’s network?

  RICK: Don’t be sadistic. You know I can never be that.

  JAY: The Screen Door of Union, et cetera.

  RICK: Make my ears stop rumbling.

  Dr. Jay pauses.

  Rick Vigorous pauses.

  JAY: Rick, friend, has it never occurred to you that you might actually represent the genetic cutting edge?

  RICK: The what?

  JAY: I invite you to think about it. We as a species used to have tails, no? A full coat of thick body-hair? Prehensile toes? Far keener senses of taste, small, hearing, et cetera than we possess today? We eventually lost all these features.Tossed them aside. Why was this?

  RICK: What are you trying to say?

  JAY: Rick, we didn’t need them. The context in which they had an appropriate function dissolved. They had no use.

  RICK: What are you trying to say?

  JAY: I suppose I am trying to bring into the focus of our emotional attention the following features of the contemporary society we both enjoy. Genetic engineering. Artificial insemination. Quantum leaps in the technology of sexual aids and implements and prostheses. Perhaps what most of us perceive as the centers of ourselves are simply no longer needed. And we both know that the absence of function, in nature, means death. There is nothing superfluous in nature. Perhaps you are the next wave, Rick. Have you ever thought of that, in the quiet times? Perhaps you are to this Lang what the first upright man was to the crouched, hunched, drooling simian. A sort of god. A prototype, seated on nature’s right hand, for the nonce. A man for the future.

  RICK: I think I’d prefer to be the drooling simian, thank you very much. JAY: And why is that?

  RICK: I’ll bet you can puzzle it out.

  JAY: It has to do with Lenore.

  Rick Vigorous pauses.

  JAY: Rick, I put a vital question to you in the gentlest and most diplomatic terms possible. Do you think you are truly what
Lenore Beadsman wants? What she really needs?

  RICK: We love each other.

  JAY: You didn’t answer my question. We both know that Lenore is a wonderful but not insignificantly troubled girl. Are you helping her? Are you concerned with her needs? Are you engaged in the sort of discriminating, mature love that focuses primary attention on the needs and interests of the beloved?

  RICK: I definitely don’t think Lang is what she needs.

  JAY: Who said Lang is what Lenore needs? It’s you we’re discussing, here.

  RICK: I think I’d rather discuss Lenore.

  JAY: And the issues are separate, aren’t they? And recognized as such. Discussing Lenore is different from discussing you.

  RICK: There’s something wrong with that?

  JAY: I didn’t say that, Rick. I was simply making an observation. You and Lenore are distinct. Your networks may overlap, but they are distinct. They are neither identical nor coextensive. They are distinct. RICK: What about my dream? Now I’m both afraid to go to the bathroom and afraid to go to sleep. There’s not too much left.

  JAY: I personally think the dream is far too complicated to tackle in the short time remaining to us today. For what it’s worth to you, I believe it represents a gigantic foot in the door of breakthrough. I might make a few off-the-cuff observations, if you wish. Shall I?

  RICK: (uninteUigible).

  JAY: The dream strikes me as being simply chock full of networks. Inside-Outside relations. Inside is the office, outside is the shadow and the little girl, both threatening to enter, to suck you in. Lenore is inside the page, inside the drawing Lang creates with his bottle, but she transcends her context and comes quickly to emblazon her context on his outside. You are trapped behind, inside, the fan of urine, but the tea bag you use to try to cover your difference from the Other “bleeds out” into the hot liquid and stains, discolors, soils the already unclean out-of-contro! extension of Self that imprisons you. A tea bag in hot liquid strikes this psychologist as a perfect archetypal image for the disorienting and disrupting influence of a weak-membraned hygiene-identity network on the associations of distinct networks in relation to which it does, must, understand itself. So on and so on. Airless scream: air cannot get inside your lungs. Lenore “drowning”: clean air in lungs displaced by the exponentially soiled element of soiling tea in soiling Self-extending liquid. Lang holds Lenore under the stained surface with his anus, the absolute archetypal locus of the unclean. There are of course the seemingly ever-present mice, in the putrid currents. Mice we’ve discussed at length already ...