Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays

I've never read Wallace, mostly because his best known work ("Infinite Jest") is so long. But I tend to like writers that digress and use footnotes for asides, so I thought maybe this collection of ten essays would give me enough of a taste to know if I should check out his other stuff. Ranging in length from 7 to 80 pages, the essays all appeared previously (albeit often truncated) in various magazines such as Harper's, The Atlantic, Gourmet, Rolling Stone, Premier, etc. They can be roughly categorized into three categories: brief review, personal piece, and long in-depth topical examination.

The brief reviews generally tend to take an item and use it as a staging area for discussing something more interesting than the given subject. For example, in "Certainly the End of Something or Other", Wallace uses his review of John Updike's novel Toward the End of Time to highlight the general narcissism and shallowness of writers such as Updike, Philip Roth, and Norman Mailer. His 20-page review of Joseph Frank's biography of Dostoevsky is largely dedicated to making a larger point about literary criticism, and his 25-page review of tennis player Tracy Austin's autobiography is similarly dedicated to identifying the fundamental problem of sports memoirs. I have to admit that the essential point of the shortest piece, "Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness", eluded me.

The two more personal pieces are strikingly different, but in each one gets a vivid impression of Wallace working through his own feelings. In, "The View From Mrs. Thompson's", he uses 13 pages to recount his own September 11 experience in Bloomington, Indiana. As one reads of the mysterious sprouting of flags, Wallace's hunt for a flag of his own, and his spending the day watching the footage with old ladies who've never been to New York, his mounting alienation from his neighbors is fascinating. The titular story is ostensibly a standard travel piece on a Maine lobster festival, but rapidly evolves into a thoughtful meditation (with scientific research) on the ethics of preparing and eating lobster.

The four in-depth essays are the real stars of the book, in each Wallace gets deep into his material and wallows in it with intellectual vigor and above all, wit. In the 50-page "Big Red Son", he covers the porn Oscars and emerges with scenes and quotes so surreal they must be true. Over the course of the 50-page "Authority and American Usage", he takes a topic close to his heart as a writing instructor and provides a layman's overview of the Prescriptivist vs. Descriptivist "usage wars". The underbelly of political campaigning is exposed in the 80-page "Up Simba", detailing his week on the John McCain's 2000 campaign trail -- the ultimate lesson is that if you want the most astute and nuanced political analysis, turn to the camera and sound techs, not the journos. Finally, the 70-page "Host" takes us into the world of talk radio, via a profile of an LA radio personality. All of these long pieces are wonderful (albeit in very different ways), as they allow Wallace's intellect the space to range free and elaborate.

Ultimately, it's not hard to see why Wallace is a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" award-winner. His combination of smarts, thoughtfulness, self-awareness, wit, and ability to write killer prose simply can't be ignored. One does have to raise an eyebrow at his overuse of footnotes, however. While I'm a big fan of footnotes (yes, even in fiction), I find Wallace's use of footnotes within footnotes rather tiresome (not to mention tough on the eyes). In many instances, it seems like the material could have been handled much more elegantly within the text, or within a parenthetical. This is especially true of "Host", which is very nearly ruined by the attempt to use boxed text and arrows to replace footnotes. There's no textual reason for the method, and the experiment doesn't work at all, only serving to highlight the unnecessary divisions of information and reducing their navigability.

Although a few of the pieces failed to totally captivate me, and the overfootnoting grated (especially in it's final iteration), this is still a highly entertaining and enlightening book. Chuck Klosterman's essays are like potato chips -- yummy, hard to stop at just one, and not super filling. Wallace's are generally a full nutritious meal at your favorite restaurant.

I'm a big fan of Wallace's insane 1000-page tome, Infinite Jest, although I've never been able to convince anyone else to read it -- even lent it to a friend who doesn't have a television to ensure it'd be read. The thing about Infinite Jest that might about kill ya (aside from the fact that it's so fanciful that it should be called fiction fiction) is the fact that half the story is footnotes and endnotes and you're constantly losing your place, forgetting where you were, and being taken on a tangent to a tangent that you're not convinced will ever return. Wallace continues this style, even experimenting with a not-seen-before graphical depiction of footnotes in "Host" that involves boxes and arrows to more-or-less contain the notes and direct your attention. The stories are good, and funny, although not laugh-out-loud so. The reviews of Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky's biographies are a hoot; completely over the top, and I'm not sure Wallace even read Frank's books. Same goes for his review of A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (which he insists on calling ADMAU) -- it's not so much a review as an excuse for Wallace to stand on his bully pulpit and make all sorts of crazy rants about language. The story called Consider the Lobster is the most accessible, probably the best story of the lot, and has the fewest doubly-redirected footnotes. Start with that one if you've not read Wallace before and work your way up to Infinite Jest.

Probably no contemporary writer has to meet higher expectations than David Foster Wallace. He's a genius. Ask anyone. In some cases, this works against him; as someone who survived reading Wallace's essay collection A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING..., I can testify that Mr. Wallace sometimes has aspirations that even his prodigious skills can't meet, and the results ain't pretty.

But in CONSIDER THE LOBSTER, he is hitting on almost all of his many cylinders. In fact, it is high praise indeed for me to report that on a flight to Phoenix, I was laughing so hard at this book's first essay (it's about a pornography awards show), I almost felt compelled to explain to my fellow passenger the source of my mirth.

I didn't. (I'm not insane.) But it was that good.

The rest of the topics examined by Wallace's gimlet eyes are, shall we say, wide-ranging, but aside from an enervating and lengthy examination of A DICTIONARY OF MODERN USAGE, Wallace lives up to his "genius" billing. I did grimace when I saw that the book contained a piece devoted to one of his pet topics, (namely tennis), but even this essay transcended its subject and was eminently worthwhile.

In short, I'm quite glad to have read this book. More, please.

Do you have any idea how many lobsters die each year in order to satisfy our culinary cravings? I've no idea, but after reading the essay `Consider the Lobster,' I have to say - too many.

Mr. Wallace approaches the issue from the stand point of our claw-y friends. Put yourself in the lobster's position - here you are, backtracking through the bottom of New England's coastline and suddenly you find yourself in the 100+ lbs pressure cooker of the annual Main Lobster Festival. You squirm, you fight, you die. But who are you? Are you just a tasty subject, one that is born to feed the gluttony of others, or are you more than that? Does anyone ever consider the fact that from a biological stand point, the lobster is a lot more of a complex system than the simple single cell organism of the ocean? If yes, then how come we avoid considering the consequences of the painful gastronomic preparations, that the Lobster MAY be feeling the unbearable pain of the boiling water?

There are other interesting essays in this book. Essays like the one on the debauchery of American porn industry, on the depravity of selected few who parade their sexuality not only on TV, but on the Las Vegas strip ( I personally found this essay too overwhelming for my literary tastes).

...and there are more.

Overall, I recommend this book to all intellectual seekers of contemporary issues that plague our nation. Here is a chance to satisfy your tastes for criticism, creativity and irony with this highly entertaining and skillfully constructed book.

- by Simon Cleveland

This collection of essays will make you laugh out loud and also think about popular culture and politics and unique and uncomfortable ways. What good writing should do. The essay on the porn industry alone is worth the price of the book.