Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

Summary

Do lobster feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult-video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers here these questions and more in essays that are enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World's Largest Lobsters Cooker, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any American letters.

David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (Back Bay Books, New York, July, 2007) 343 pages.

Personal Opinion

A collection of 10 essays by an intriguing author, who is at the same time a novelist, a philosopher, and a grammarian. I enjoyed the wide range of topics contained in this group of short writings that overall reflect on life in America and his love of language (literature). From the porn industry, the “snoots” of the English language, the McCain campaign, the ideological writings of Dostoevsky, the bland writings of our sports heroes, the ethics of boiling lobsters, and the conservative radio shows to the obscure humor of Kafka, Wallace’s essays are interesting, informative, funny, and captivating. His style is creative, smart, and full of footnotes, abbreviations/acronyms (better memorize their meaning the first time you see them) and vast vocabulary (have a dictionary at hand). His depth of details and imagination can clearly and vividly convey the different worlds that he describes (porn awards, political campaign, lobster festivals, right-wing radio hosts). He is an observer of some of these worlds, and he always makes clear distinctions between facts and opinions; he does not condemn or exalt them, but always and almost unconsciously makes the reader reflect profoundly on them. The essay that gave the title of the book: Consider the Lobster, will forever make me think about the last excruciating moments of the life of the unfortunate lobster that landed on my dinner menu.

-Big Red Son: The 1998 report on the Adult Video News in Las Vegas.
-One Would Sort of Have to Think: A review of Writer John Updike (one of the great male narcissists)
-Authority and American Usage: A review of the Dictionary of Modern Language and a reflection on SWE, Standard Written English.
-Not Enough Has Been Removed: On Kafka’s humor
-The View from Mrs. Thompson’s: September 11, 2001 in Bloomington, IL
-How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart: The boring autobiography of tennis player, Tracy Austin
-Up, Simba: John McCain 2000 Primary Campaign
-Consider the Lobster: To boil or not to boil
-Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky: Ideological writings of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
-Host: On conservative talk radio

My score (1-5):

About the Author:

David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American author of novels, short stories and essays, as well as a professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which was cited by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.

Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years". Wallace's last, unfinished novel, The Pale King, was published in 2011 and was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A biography of Wallace was published in September 2012, and an extensive critical literature on his work has developed in the past decade.

Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, the son of Sally Jean (née Foster) and James Donald Wallace. In his early childhood, Wallace lived in Champaign, Illinois. In fourth grade, he moved to Urbana and attended Yankee Ridge school and Urbana High School. As an adolescent, Wallace was a regionally ranked junior tennis player.

James D. Wallace, David's father, was a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is now Emeritus Professor. David's mother, Sally Foster Wallace, attended graduate school in English Composition at the University of Illinois and became a professor of English at Parkland College—a community college in Champaign—where she won a national Professor of the Year award in 1996.

Wallace attended his father's alma mater, Amherst College, and majored in English and philosophy. He participated in several extracurricular activities, including glee club; Wallace's sister recalls that "David had a lovely singing voice."Within philosophy Wallace pursued focuses in modal logic and mathematics. His philosophy senior thesis on modal logic was awarded the Gail Kennedy Memorial Prize and published posthumously as Fate, Time, and Language. His other honors thesis, written for his English major, would become his first novel, The Broom of the System.[7] Wallace graduated summa cum laude for both theses in 1985. By the end of his undergraduate education, Wallace was committed to fiction; he told David Lipsky, "Writing [Broom], I felt like I was using 97 percent of me, whereas philosophy was using 50 percent". He pursued a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at the University of Arizona, completing it in 1987, by which time Broom had been published. Wallace moved to Boston for graduate school in philosophy at Harvard University, but soon abandoned it.

In the early 1990s, Wallace had a relationship with the poet and memoirist Mary Karr. Wallace married painter Karen L. Green on December 27, 2004.Dogs played an important role in Wallace's life: he was very close to his two dogs, Bella and Werner, had spoken of opening a dog shelter, and, according to Jonathan Franzen, "had a predilection for dogs who'd been abused, and [were] unlikely to find other owners who were going to be patient enough for them". Wallace's younger sister, Amy Wallace Havens of Tucson, Arizona, has practiced law since 2005.

Wallace committed suicide on September 12, 2008, at age 46. Wallace's father reported in an interview that his son had suffered from depression for more than 20 years and that antidepressant medication had allowed him to be productive. When he experienced severe side effects from the medication, he attempted to wean himself from his primary antidepressant, phenelzine. On his doctor's advice, Wallace stopped taking the medication in June 2007, and the depression returned. Wallace received other treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy. When he returned to phenelzine, he found that it had lost its effectiveness. His wife kept a watchful eye on him in the following days, but on September 12, Wallace went into the garage, wrote a two-page note, and arranged part of the manuscript for The Pale King before hanging himself from a patio rafter.

Numerous gatherings were held to honor Wallace after his death, including memorial services at Pomona College, Amherst College, University of Arizona, Illinois State University, and on October 23, 2008, at New York University—the last with speakers including his sister, Amy Wallace Havens; his agent, Bonnie Nadell; Gerry Howard, the editor of his first two books; Colin Harrison, editor at Harper's Magazine; Michael Pietsch, the editor of Infinite Jest and Wallace's later work; Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker; as well as authors Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith, George Saunders, Mark Costello (Wallace was the godfather of Costello's daughter, Delia), Donald Antrim, and Jonathan Franzen

Source: Wikipedia