If you've read anything by David Foster Wallace (henceforth DFW), you'll know exactly what you're getting with this collection of essays and whether or not you want to read more from him. Thus, I will assume that you have not read anything by him previously.
Consider the Lobster is a collection of ten essays, five of which I would call major essays (50+ pages), and the other five are significantly shorter.
When at his best, DFW is the best American writer of his generation. You have to go back to McCarthy and Pynchon to find someone who surpasses him. However, he does not always write at his best, and Consider the Lobster reflects that. To understand both my praise of some essays and my letdown with regard to others, you'll need to understand what DFW is doing with these essays. DFW takes a seemingly uninspired banal topic and uses it as a launch point to discuss issues which would be very difficult to discuss directly or without a great deal of context. For example, in the essay How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart, DFW begins by reviewing the insipid sports autobiography of Tracy Austin. However, he uses that as a lunching platform to discuss the nature of sports genius- what separates a Tracy Austin or Tom Brady from every other athlete? Also, why are athletes so inarticulate about the nature of their ability?
My personal favorite, Up, Simba, details the 2000 John McCain Republican Nominee race against George W. Bush. The essay interlaces mundane detail of the day-to-day happenings of the campaign with astute observations about the nature of political advertising, whether or not its possible for a candidate to be genuine (in what may have been the single best insult I've read, DFW describes Al Gore as "surprisingly life-like"), and why young people seem so disengaged with politics. His writings and observations about marketing, political leadership, and the political ennui many young people feel are relevant considering how young people overwhelmingly supported Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders (ideologically polar opposites whose only connecting feature is an apparent genuineness.)
DFW has some ideas that are pervasive in this book and some of his other writings (such as his magnum opis, Infinite Jest). He is concerned with the interplay of marketing, entertainment, the insularity that this allows individuals and communities of people to exist in. These are all deeply important topics to modern (as in, right now) American culture and Western Culture in due time.
About seventy percent of the essays in this book are of elite quality. They are deep, refreshing, and I fell enriched for having read them. With such a high bar set, it's not surprising if some essays fail to measure up. The opening major essay "Big, Red, Son" is a expose of the porn Adult Video Network award ceremony. I would have thought this topic would be a veritable gold mine in the hands of a writer and observer like DFW. He could have written about how porn has warped (mostly young mens') aesthetic sensibilities of sex and women all the while not sounding preachy or condescending. Or perhaps he could have written about the escalatory nature of media and our viewing habits. Porn must become increasingly extreme, outlandish, etc. in order to keep male viewers, thus exacerbating those warped sexual sensibilities. With all this potential material, the essay defaults to "the people are crude and wholly without a sense of decency". The essay falls flat for the time it takes to read it.
Overall, this is a good book, and 70 percent of it is great.
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