Biff Diggerence

Biff Diggerance (born Bernard Werner Diggerance) is a character in The Broom of the System. He is from Shillington, Pennsylvania.

Biff was one of the two visitors at Clarice Beadsman's dorm room on the night in 1981 that Lenore visited Mount Holyoke.

Biff was a student at Amherst College, where he roomed with Andrew Lang and Doug Dangler. Biff began an Amherst tradition of banging one's head against a wall to try and prevent becoming sick from drinking too much alcohol.

The name is a pun on Jacques Derrida's concept of differance, but bigg differance.

In an interview with Larry McCaffery, Wallace talked explicitly about Derrida in the genesis of the novel: “Think of “The Broom of the System” as the sensitive tale of a sensitive young WASP who’s just had this mid-life crisis that’s moved him from coldly cerebral analytic math to a coldly cerebral take on fiction and AustinWittgenstein-Derridean literary theory […].” (McCaffery)

Biff banging his head against the wall is a metaphor for many college students' experiences of Derrida and post modern philosophy.