I read my first piece by David Foster Wallace, a (relatively) short first-person essay about attending a tennis match, when I was a sophomore in college and began buying each and every one of his books at a rapid speed almost immediately. He quickly became my favorite author for the rest of my college years, and still shares the title of favorite author in my mind (the sharing is new, and I think, a good sign of an adult openness to trying new things).
Between his works, I can’t pick a favorite piece of writing. The dark mastery of The Pale King can’t be pitted against the bizzaro-rawness of his short story collection Girl with the Curious Hair. You can’t set aside the fact his (perhaps) magnum opus Infinite Jest annual gets readers to commit to an Infinite Summer, in which they read the 1,079 page masterpiece over the course of three months.
So no, I don’t have a favorite work by Wallace. But, The Broom of the System has become the one of the books most treasured on my shelves.
