applies to MFA programs in his senior year (because he needed health insurance, and for that you need a job, and for that you probably need an MFA). hospitalized for depression and starts Nardil. starts at Arizona, and is interested in the ideas behind fiction in addition to writing itself (took a class on Derrida's Of Grammatology, for instance). seems like he was pretty arrogant and show-offy at this point (using, e.g., "How well do you know Pynchon's work?" as an icebreaker). Broom gets picked up by Viking Penguin; he writes Little Expressionless Animals and Here and There and some other short stories