smokerblog

Consider the Backlash

So now that I've read David Foster Wallace's coverage of the Maine Lobster Festival, I'm amazed that Gourmet would allow such a wide-eyed and personal inquiry of meat-eating ethics to be published within its pages. It almost makes me want to go out and buy a subscription, if only to show support for the editor's display of cojones. Indeed, judging from some of the indignant posts in the Gourmet forum, they've lost some subscriptions already.

Erik Markus, a vegan who obviously has little love to spare for Gourmet or their readership, applauds DFW's article. He hypothesizes that the Gourmet editors were stuck with an article from a prestigious (and high-priced) writer and were forced to publish it or eat (no pun) the cost. But then he quotes this passage where DFW confronts the Gourmet readership with the central issue:

Given the (possible) moral status and (very possible) physical suffering of the animals involved, what ethical convictions do gourmets evolve that allow them not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh-based viands (since of course refined enjoyment, rather than just ingestion, is the whole purpose of gastronomy)? And for those gourmets who’ll have no truck with convictions or rationales and who regard stuff like the previous paragraph as just so much pointless navel-gazing, what makes it feel okay, inside, to dismiss the whole issue out of hand? That is, is their refusal to think about any of this the product of actual thought, or is it just that they don’t want to think about it? Do they ever think about their reluctance to think about it? After all, isn’t being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one’s food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet? Or is all the gourmet’s extra attention and sensibility just supposed to be aesthetic, gustatory?

By the end of his review, even this semi-militant vegan is forced to concede that perhaps the editors have enough respect for their readers to let them form their own opinions. Bottom line: the article is vintage DFW. Hilarious and sharp-witted without being cruel. Troubling and thought-provoking without being preachy. Something for everyone. (Kari even liked it.)