As of yet, neither of Wallace's novels has been released as audio books. This, however, is understandable because of their extraordinary difficulty and use of many narrative strategies and voices; such vicissitude and complexity does not lend well to the audio medium. Moreover, their enormity and proclivity to footnotes similarly cancels any likelihood of a Wallace audio book in the near future. One suspects that Wallace's aesthetic of active engagement with a literary text would be eroded if his novels were converted to audio format: the simple movement between text and Wallacean footnotes (of which there are none in The Broom of the System) could not be adequately accommodated by the audio medium.

In interviews Wallace has admitted to having sold the film rights to Infinite Jest, but not his earlier The Broom of the System.

However, as with audio books, the probability of seeing either novel in...