Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (book)
Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (Written by David
Foster Wallace)/2005
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8FffXiYHANW5jU4MCIM7Zrnjp9ItsMb6xPI6pba0sJ6D21yaRD1I_g9yVkj6Ct7MKLyIRMUSgAmreaJIotVYbGFbO_g-En_wa1GCbV1ftluFg1VnDaorKgdZbt8ejyLHqDtdvIc1TDOU/s1600/download+(3).jpeg)
DFW’s novels do not follow the usual temporal course: they
bounce between characters and times in history, creating a feeling of a time
and place rather than following a character through the temporal flow of past
moving into future. They are novels that create a feeling and make a moral
statement through a buildup of people and events: we, as readers, become
immersed in the atmosphere rather than the story.
I think at a certain point in these novels I had absorbed
the message DFW was trying to make and didn’t need any more evidence. As I was
pretty sure there would be no grand conclusion or surprise ending I did not
feel the need to read any more. Maybe that is OK: maybe his novels should be
approached more like a set of short stories and essays grouped together around
a central theme, which the reader can pick up and put down when the desire
strikes.
In contrast to his novels, I really enjoyed his collection
of essays. I find he is at his best in them: funny, detailed without being
tedious, and confined to the necessary space to make his point.
Consider the Lobster is a good place to start for someone
interested in DWF. We find in this collection of essays a person with a deep
curiosity about many things and an uncanny ability to move from the seemingly
unimportant to the deeply philosophical.
The collection opens with DFW exploring the Adult Movie
Awards. I laughed my way through this piece as the quirky, curious DWF rubs
shoulders with famous porn stars and becomes acquainted with the lingo.
In one scene he goes to a party filled with porn stars; he notes his irrational expectation to find them suddenly stripping off into a massive orgy, when in actuality they sit after a tiring day "at the office" watching re-runs of Seinfeld. In the usual DFW turn of mind, he uses all this to reflect on the role
of entertainment in American society, and compares the AMAs with the Academy awards in an insightful manner.
In ‘Up Simba’ we find DFW on the campaign trial with John
McCain. This essay is interesting due to his fascinating observations of all
the different types of people that are involved in the campaign. Moreover, it
focuses on modern cynicism towards politics, and DFW’s attempts to interpret
the enigmatic McCain: an actual prisoner of war that wants to run an
anti-political campaign that is equally political in its own way (or is it?). DFW throughout this essay is genuinely struggling to ascertain whether a modern political candidate can be authentic, and to what extent the contemporary cynicism towards politics is justified or a manifestation of a misguided mind set.
The main essay in this collection is the title piece
‘Consider the Lobster’. Here DWF travels to the Maine Lobster festival. Like
all of his essays, he entertains the reader with his observations of people and
the effects the things around him have on his sensitive disposition.
Ultimately, we find a man struggling with different arguments raised in regard
to animal rights and the spectrum where a being becomes deserving of these
rights. How can we watch lobsters being tipped into huge hot pots of water to
be cooked alive when in dropping them into the water they are desperately trying to
escape? Surely, the desperation to escape indicates some awareness of the
extreme pain that awaits them. DFW does not pontificate, but is clearly someone
struggling with the notion of what a good person should do in a world without
clear moral truths.