Consider the Lobster and Other Essays Paperback – July 2, 2007

David Foster Wallace, more so than any other person, makes me laugh and cry, in other words, feel deeply. Which is a good thing, I think--which is the other thing he makes me do--think. And all that is as he intended if I am interpreting his writing accurately--which is as he posits, not possible--to know how a reader will react to what it is you write; but writing, as Wallace says, is nothing but, " ... an act of communication between one human being and another ... " [From "Greatly Exaggerated" in the Harvard Book Review (1992) reprinted in A supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (1997). Essentially this is what troubled Wallace throughout his life--all these little contradictions that abound everywhere if you take the time and spend your attention looking. Which is what he did better than anyone I have ever read or listened to. He was an expert observer by his own criteria which is to be passionate about what you care about. And yet, his observations were often dispassionate, or better, more clear because he did not allow his passion to cloud what it was he saw. And then could he write? Better than anyone else I've read, because he had a mastery of words and language. He was a self acknowledged "SNOOT," or an extreme word usage fanatic (fn. pg. 69 in "Authority and American Usage.") Which is a book review of an American language usage dictionary, wrote in 1999, that had me laughing out loud, which is not an easy thing to do. A lot! So, besides dispassionate (mostly) he observes and writes objectively (as much as this is possible) in beautiful, unambiguous, extraordinarily detailed prose. If you are not curious and not open-minded, Wallace's writing will disturb you. And if you are curious and open-minded his writing will blow your mind and really, really disturb you. If you are the former, however, you don't have to read him and probably won't, and things will go on as they always have. But if you are the latter - you must read him - and then things might never be the same. So that is a general review of what you're in store for in Consider The Lobster.Slightly more specifically. The non-fiction essays were written (except for one in 1994) from 1998 through 2005. The subjects are: Words, language, literature, teaching, writing, thinking, lying, entertainment, sports, celebrity, politics, food, small towns, Las Vegas, pornography, morality, talk radio; and of course the people and personalities that make up those places, industries, and things ... in other words: What it is to be human in America at the turn of this millennium. Do I always agree with him? No. For example, in "Up, Simba," about John McCain and the GOP primary of 2000 he writes about the decision to vote or not (something I have written about myself) and I agree with him--not voting is actually a vote for the status quo. And this, in the same essay, hits home:" ... getting lied to sucks - that it diminishes you, denies you respect for yourself, for the liar, for the world. Especially if the lies are chronic, systemic, if experience seems to teach that everything you're supposed to believe in's really just a game based on lies." (pg. 189)Yes, David; but just what game are you talking about? ( I was living just a few miles away from him when he killed himself. And before his death I had never heard of him. I feel - like I lost something, something that I'll never have the opportunity to experience ever again.) [If you're into the ins-n-outs of lying, check out my blog @ markjabbour.com (coming in mid July 2011). Lying is one of my favorite subjects.] So how does Wallace reconcile that with this: The senior ladies, his neighbors in Bloomington, Indiana, on September 11, 2001 were innocent. He says. Not stupid but innocent. I get his point, but I disagree. No adult in America is innocent. Children are innocent; but in a democracy that stands for freedom and equal rights, every citizen, especially the older you get and the more you benefit from that freedom - is not innocent but responsible. Ahhh, but these are the contradictions that drove Wallace, ultimately I think, to take his own life. He asked questions, the right questions, he studied the problems and asked more questions. And more than any other, he could put it all down on paper so as not to offended or rankle or make defensive - but to make people think. Which is, arguably (which he does) a good thing, right?

If you've read anything by David Foster Wallace (henceforth DFW), you'll know exactly what you're getting with this collection of essays and whether or not you want to read more from him. Thus, I will assume that you have not read anything by him previously.Consider the Lobster is a collection of ten essays, five of which I would call major essays (50+ pages), and the other five are significantly shorter.When at his best, DFW is the best American writer of his generation. You have to go back to McCarthy and Pynchon to find someone who surpasses him. However, he does not always write at his best, and Consider the Lobster reflects that. To understand both my praise of some essays and my letdown with regard to others, you'll need to understand what DFW is doing with these essays. DFW takes a seemingly uninspired banal topic and uses it as a launch point to discuss issues which would be very difficult to discuss directly or without a great deal of context. For example, in the essay How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart, DFW begins by reviewing the insipid sports autobiography of Tracy Austin. However, he uses that as a lunching platform to discuss the nature of sports genius- what separates a Tracy Austin or Tom Brady from every other athlete? Also, why are athletes so inarticulate about the nature of their ability?My personal favorite, Up, Simba, details the 2000 John McCain Republican Nominee race against George W. Bush. The essay interlaces mundane detail of the day-to-day happenings of the campaign with astute observations about the nature of political advertising, whether or not its possible for a candidate to be genuine (in what may have been the single best insult I've read, DFW describes Al Gore as "surprisingly life-like"), and why young people seem so disengaged with politics. His writings and observations about marketing, political leadership, and the political ennui many young people feel are relevant considering how young people overwhelmingly supported Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders (ideologically polar opposites whose only connecting feature is an apparent genuineness.)DFW has some ideas that are pervasive in this book and some of his other writings (such as his magnum opis, Infinite Jest). He is concerned with the interplay of marketing, entertainment, the insularity that this allows individuals and communities of people to exist in. These are all deeply important topics to modern (as in, right now) American culture and Western Culture in due time.About seventy percent of the essays in this book are of elite quality. They are deep, refreshing, and I fell enriched for having read them. With such a high bar set, it's not surprising if some essays fail to measure up. The opening major essay "Big, Red, Son" is a expose of the porn Adult Video Network award ceremony. I would have thought this topic would be a veritable gold mine in the hands of a writer and observer like DFW. He could have written about how porn has warped (mostly young mens') aesthetic sensibilities of sex and women all the while not sounding preachy or condescending. Or perhaps he could have written about the escalatory nature of media and our viewing habits. Porn must become increasingly extreme, outlandish, etc. in order to keep male viewers, thus exacerbating those warped sexual sensibilities. With all this potential material, the essay defaults to "the people are crude and wholly without a sense of decency". The essay falls flat for the time it takes to read it.Overall, this is a good book, and 70 percent of it is great.