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Avg. Customer Rating:(based on 48 reviews) Sales Rank: 1316 Category: Book
Author:David Foster Wallace Publisher:Back Bay Books Studio:Back Bay Books Manufacturer:Back Bay Books Label:Back Bay Books Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published) Media: Paperback Number Of Items: 1 Pages: 352 Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7 Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.1
Product Description Do lobsters 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 these questions and more in essays that are also 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 Lobster Cooker at the annual Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters.
How do you review something you never got? October 31, 2008 0 out of 5 found this review helpful
I never received the book. Wrote to the guy and he said he'd re-send it. I think I'll see Santa Claus first.
Very boring book September 15, 2008 1 out of 26 found this review helpful
If your a Professor of English this book might be up your alley. Otherwise, stay away!
The first essay is about an adult film awards show. it's lengthy and rather hilarious. But the rest of the book is a snoozer.
Not as Good as Most People Think (Still Not Bad) May 6, 2008 4 out of 10 found this review helpful
I don't get all the 5 star, Wallace loving reviews here. This really isn't spectacular. There are some 5 star essays in the book (Big Red Son, Host). Also some one star ones that are just awful and tedious to read.
Who wants to read 75 pages about his views on language usage. Maybe if your a linguistics major. The tour diary from travelling with McCain loses it's drive halfway through.
Good, but not his best. Start w/ "Infinite Jest" and take it from there.
for DFW disciples February 25, 2008 2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I would suggest, dear reader, that when considering Consider the Lobster, that you consider it in the same light as David Foster Wallace's collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. Use that book as your frame of reference for style and content and you can place this collection firmly into the category of "typical" DFW. That being said, if you thoroughly enjoyed A Supposedly Fun Thing... then you'll likely thoroughly enjoy this one as well; by that same coin, if you're on the fence, you're unlikely to be won over; and if you dislike DFW (If you truly and I mean honestly and passionately dislike DFW, well then I suggest some rigorous therapeutic interventions) then this collection will probably do you no favors.
So in this reviewer's opinion: Consider the Lobster is more of the same. But that's a good thing.More...
One thing that CtL has over ASFTINDA is that it reads like an essayist's equivalent to a DJ's mixtape. While the essays individually are more than capable of standing on their own (e.g., apart from each other; i.e., in their original printings) they are arranged in such a creative way here that they build upon each other. The essays are vaguely self-referential, perhaps purposefully so; "jokes" from a given essay may rely heavily on you properly "getting" and then retaining the thesis of a preceding essay. I submit as an example: "Authority and American Usage" contains several sections that are slightly humorous in their own respect but can only be truly appreciated as bracingly so when you recall Wallace's thesis on Franz Kafka's humor from the prior article and the accompanying explication of said humor and why it is thoroughly pointless to try and explain any joke anywhere, let alone Kafka's absurdly dark and probably pathological comedy (which is totally drained of its humor when you try to offer any kind of explanation. I offer as further evidence for this that (after a protracted bout of laughing) I read aloud (to A.) a passage from "Authority and American Usage" and how it's humor is underscored by the thesis of the Kafka essay to which A. offered scarcely an acknowledging chortle). In this way, CtL may be Wallace's finest collection to date; the interleaving of the essays, their strength when taken as a whole, an obscurely surreal recursion. It's really all quite expertly done.
Perhaps the highlight of this collection is the maturity that Wallace is showing. Previous collections have his tone and style coming off as a bit of an effete intellectual, a nerdy-but-hip smartest-kid-in-class tone that is simultaneously masterfully humorous and maddening. Like maybe he's just trying to make you feel dumb but then again maybe it's thesaurial sleight-of-hand to play into some particular joke. Which is not at all to suggest that he has discarded this completely. But maybe like he's toned it down a bit (maybe?)? His signature style is definitely still there but he seems to have grown into it, it's a better fit. Whereas before it may have felt borderline confrontational (see above), it comes across now as disarming. For example, in the midst of "Authority and American Usage", Wallace comes across (on the one hand) vaguely condescending of SNOOTs (just read the essay...) and then on the other hand admits to being one; and then he takes a deeper dig on SNOOTs by eviscerating their essays and articles and other writings (e.g., the heavy-handed and jargon-laden "worst ever" publications of Comparative Lit profs) by using the very same over-the-top vocabulary to get to that point (I mean seriously: do you know anyone to drop "solecistic" in casual conversation?). The whole routine can be a little jaw-clenched maddening but is for those same reasons endearing and worthwhile.
It is also seems worth mentioning that Wallace masterfully frames pretty grand subject matter in all kinds of tangential and frankly genius-like-a-mad-scientist ways that it's formidable and a bit frightening. Example: Wallace uses "Authority and American Usage" as a vehicle to discuss linguistic politics and the critical role of socialization, language learning, and regional dialects on individual growth and development (Compare/contrast with similar arguments posited in Freakonomics). Example: Wallace uses his coverage of McCain2000 in "Up, Simba!" to discuss the political brokerage through media outlets and the bizarre power dynamics at work between journalists, politicians, and their handlers (let it also be known that this becomes painfully apparent when the essay's title appears in the text; it's a real head-slapping moment with a kind of chilling aftershock). Example: how Wallace goes to work on the ethics of food in "Consider the Lobster", working through the logic rather elegantly and then stupefyingly relinquishing it all with the atavistic admission that that simply isn't enough to tear you away from the desire to enjoy something delicious. In light of all this, it's no wonder an aspiring author Such As continues to find himself enthralled and intimidated by this literary Cronus.
Parting shots? I have two: the first regarding my "four of five" rating and the second a mere sidebar.
First: though the tone in CtL shows a refreshing maturity and welcome evolution, and though every essay is engaging and timely and brilliant, there also seem to be moments of tedium. Perhaps this is expected and unavoidable. But an essay on a book on the life and times of Dostoevsky (e.g.) can disappoint. Abandoning the F.N. format for a House of Leaves-esque series of drawn boxes is more distracting than textually informing (even if the essay's content is exhilarating and terrifying). And maybe it's just me but "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart" seemed (via the text) a parody of itself as much as it was a parody and/or review of the book in question.
Second: while I don't believe that these kinds of things, should matter, I'm also of the opinion that Wallace should have fired the photographer. Or perhaps chosen a better photo from that particular shoot. I realize that folks may want their book jacket photos to be relatively current, and I realize that our bodies change over time, and all of that is fine; but I also wonder if his publisher could have perhaps insisted that they find a photo that did NOT make him look like a squinty-eyed and slightly slumped Jeffrey Lebowski. Seriously sir, that's your credibility at stake here.
Smart, eclectic, and hilariously funny. January 31, 2008 6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Full disclosure: I have a major intellectual crush on David Foster Wallace. Yes, yes, I know about his weaknesses - the digressions, the rampant footnote abuse, the flaunting of his amazing erudition, the mess that is 'Infinite Jest'. I know all this, and I don't care. Because when he is in top form, there's nobody else I would rather read. The man is hilarious; I think he's a mensch, and I don't believe he parades his erudition just to prove how smart he is. I think he can't help himself - it's a consequence of his wide-ranging curiosity. At heart he's a geek, but a charming, hyper-articulate geek. Who is almost frighteningly intelligent.
The pieces in "Consider the Lobster" have appeared previously in Rolling Stone, The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Observer, the Philadelphia Enquirer, Harper's, Gourmet, and Premiere magazines. Among them are short meditations on Updike's `Toward the end of Time', on Dostoyevsky, on Kafka's humor, and on the `breathtakingly insipid autobiography' of tennis player Tracy Austin. An intermediate length piece describes Foster Wallace's (eminently sane) reaction to the attacks of September 11th. Each of these shorter essays is interesting, but the meat and potatoes of the book is in the remaining five, considerably longer, pieces. They are:
Big Red Son: a report on the 1998 Adult Video News awards (the Oscars of porn) in Las Vegas. Consider the Lobster: a report on a visit to the annual Maine Lobster Festival (for Gourmet magazine). Host: a report on conservative talk radio, based on extensive interviews conducted with John Ziegler, host of "Live and Local" on Southern California's KFI. Up Simba: an account of seven days on the campaign trail with John McCain in his 2000 presidential bid (for Rolling Stone). Authority and American Usage: a review of Bryan Garner's "A Dictionary of Modern American Usage" , which serves as a springboard for a terrific exegesis of usage questions and controversies.
Here's what I like about David Foster Wallace's writing: I know of nobody else who writes as thoughtfully and intelligently. That he manages to write so informatively, with humor and genuine wit, on almost any subject under the sun is mind-blowing - it's also why I am willing to forgive his occasional stylistic excesses. (Can you spell `footnote'?) You may not have a strong interest in lobsters or pornography, but the essays in question are terrific. The reporting on Ziegler and McCain is amazingly good, heartbreakingly so, because it makes the relative shallowness of most reporting painfully evident. Finally, the article on usage is a tour de force - when it first appeared in Harper's, upon finishing it, I was immediately moved to go online and order a copy of Garner's book (which is just as good as DFW promised).
How can you not enjoy an essay that begins as follows?
"Did you know that probing the seamy underbelly of US lexicography reveals ideological strife and controversy and intrigue and nastiness and fervor on a near Lewinskian scale?
....... (several other rhetorical questions) ......
Did you know that US lexicography even *had* a seamy underbelly?"
And which later contains sentences such as: "Teachers who do this are dumb." "This argument is not quite the barrel of drugged trout that Methodological Descriptivism was, but it's still vulnerable to objections." and - my personal favorite - "This is so stupid it practically drools."
Not everyone will give this collection 5 stars, but I do.
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