media consumption

Consider the Lobster

by David Foster Wallace

This collection of essays by my favorite author shouldn't even count for me since I've read almost all of the essays in their original form in the periodicals in which they appeared. It is nice to have this collection all together in one place even though the essays may at first seem so different from each other. A quick glance at the table of contents reveals at least a consistent tone, despite the variety in subject matter:

Big Red Son

A outsider's report on the 1998 Adult Video News Awards (the porn industry's versioin of the Oscars).

Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think

A scathing review of John Updike's Toward the End of Time

Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed

Self-evident

Authority and American Usage

Ostensibly a review of Bryan A. Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, but really an excuse to mount a sensible defense of the importance of teaching Standard Written English

The View from Mrs. Thompson's

A touching and personal remembrance of 9/11

How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart

Ostensibly a review of Tracy Austin's autobiography, but really a thesis on the incompatibility between deep thought and athletic prowess.

Up, Simba

More "outsider" reporting, this time from the John McCain 2000 campaign bus.

Consider the Lobster

Ostensibly a report from the 2004 Maine Lobster Festival, but really a meditation upon gourmet consumption of other life-forms and the possible cruelty/inhumanity involved.

Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky

Ostensibly a study of Joseph Frank's lifetime of scholarship on Dostoevsky, but really a self-examination of DFW's own frustrated attempts to read Dostoevsky "straight," i.e., free of the baggage picked up from a life immersed in modern (and post-modern) fiction (and culture in general).

Host

An outsider's report on conservative AM talk show host John Ziegler and the state of what passes for political discourse on the airwaves and how well (or, as it turns out, not) these shows serve our democratic ideals

By approaching his subjects as an outsider, DFW becomes a fellow spectator whispering his insights and observations into our ear. In so doing, his whisperings seep into our consciousness informing our own worldview, but never once does his point of view threaten to overwhelm. More than any other living writer, DFW forces his reader to think, becoming an active participant in the dialogue between reader and author.

Previous Entries:

• The Gnostic Gospels
• The Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
• The System of the World
• Introducing Kierkegaard
• Cities of the Plain
• The Crossing
• All the Pretty Horses
• Are Those Kids Yours?
• The Confusion
• Hour Game & State of Fear
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
• The DaVinci Code
• Fever Pitch
• Danger: Falling Book Zone
• Quicksilver
• Inventing Japan
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern
• Oryx and Crake
• Why Globalization Works
• Cosmopolis
• Oblivion
• The Code Book
• Pattern Recognition