Consider The Lobster: Essays and Arguments: And Other Essays [Paperback]

I love Wallace's novels and short stories, but in my opinion his intellect sometimes impedes his storytelling. I like my books smart, but Wallace's footnotes and in-jokes and surely-you-all-know-this-as-well-as-I-do type en passant references can be a bit over the cerebral top. But what can be annoying in fiction, works far better in the essay format. His quirky and brainy and alienated reporter persona seems to me a perfect position from which to comment on the current state of affairs in such diverse spheres as porn, literature, US language, electoral campaigns, lobster festivals and conservative talk radio. His hyper-reflexive analyses are wonderfully mind-bending, his command of language supreme, and his uneasy embeddedness in real-world situations both touching and very very funny. Wallace at his essayistic best rewires your synapses and vastly expands your neural nets. You should definitely go for it.

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 finished Consider The Lobster by the US writer David Foster Wallace a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, it's now back at the library, so I can't refer to it when writing this, but I wanted to sing the praises of DFW a little. OK, a lot.

DFW first came to my attention when his epic novel Infinite Jest was published in 1996. I was blown away by the irreverence and wit of this author; the way he wore his attitude on his sleeve like a young Martin Amis. To my shame, a demanding job meant I put the book aside because I couldn't give it the attention it deserved, but I'm going to tackle it again sometime when my arm muscles are strong.(The paperback edition runs to 1080 pages of teeny tiny type.)

Subsequently, I forgot about him for a few years. Then, a couple of years ago,I borrowed Brief Interviews With Hideous Men from the library. This is one of DFW's collections of short stories, and I highly recommend it. He brings to life several ghastly characters who will make you laugh and cringe simultaneously.

One attribute of DFW's that I find unique to him is that he makes an art form of being long winded. He is a master of the footnote, and often, there's a footnote on every page in his work, with the footnote being as long as the page. Yet he is never tedious to read - on the contrary, he is refreshingly easy to consume, partly due to his dazzling ability to write and partly because there's something endearing about the way he has to explain every little point. The latter attribute means that he leads off on tangents the whole time, and the tangents have tangents too. (I'm not joking - sometimes the footnotes have footnotes). But he is definitely worth discovering. Brief Interviews is a collection that most serious readers will gobble up; the mix of dry humour and talanted eloquence being almost intoxicating.

Consider The Lobster is a collection of essays from the late '90s and early noughties. The opening one is a foray into the world of pornography: DFW attends a mega porn award show in order to write about it. The weird, twisted world of porn is accurately nailed and the reader comes away with conflicting feelings including disgust, contempt, pity and sadness.

My favourite essay was the one where DFW joins the press entourage following the Republican candidate John McCain in the last US elections. DFW writes as an impartial observer, freely admitting he voted Democrat in the election. The essay brings the world of US politics sharply into focus. The most revealing parts are those outlining the dirty tricks played by the George Dubya Bush team. Because DFW is actually on the campaign trail, following the Straight Talk Express (McCain's tour bus), there is a sense of comtemporaneous following of the trail. I found it fascinating.

The essay that gives the collection its title, Consider The Lobster,which is a piece about a major annual lobster festival in Maine, is also full of food (ouch) for thought. DFW is not a journalist who covers only the superficial aspect of a subject - he pokes around in the little niches and dark corners where other writers fear to venture. His matter-of-fact and intelligent musing on the myths we are fed about lobsters' ability to feel pain will certainly make me think before eating lobster again. The fact that he is so scrupulously researched, so damned clever, means that you want to keep reading, unlike many simplistic pro-animal rights individuals who shove partisan views down one's throat in such a biased not to mention uninformed and inaccurate way that it makes you want to avoid the issue totally. The great thing about reading DFW is that it's like listening to an incredibly bright friend give their opinion on issues in an entertaining way.

The only reason I gave this collection four stars rather than five was because of the slightly esoteric subjects covered and the fact that I tend to prefer fiction to non fiction. But DFW is probably the young (under 50) writer I would most like to be stuck in a pub with.

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