- Consider the Lobster
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Consider the Lobster 
First Edition hardcoverAuthor(s) David Foster Wallace Cover artist Yoori Kim Country United States Language English Publisher Little, Brown and Co. Publication date December 13, 2005 Media type Print (hardback, paperback) Pages 343 ISBN ISBN 0316156116 OCLC Number 59360271 Preceded by Oblivion Followed by This Is Water Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (2005) is a collection of essays by novelist David Foster Wallace. It is also the title of one of the essays, which was published in Gourmet Magazine in 2004.
Contents
Content
The entire list of essays is as follows:
- "Big Red Son"
- Wallace's account of his visit to the AVN Awards, an event that has been dubbed the Academy Awards of pornographic film, and its associated Expo (originally published in Premiere as "Neither Adult Nor Entertainment" under the pseudonyms Willem R. deGroot and Matt Rundlet)[1]
- "Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think"
- A review of John Updike's Toward the End of Time (originally published in the New York Observer)
- "Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed"
- (originally published in Harper's)
- "Authority and American Usage"
- A 62-page review of Bryan A. Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage. Wallace applies George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" to grammar and the conditions of class and power in millennial American communication. In addition to examining such seemingly technical ideas as descriptive linguistics versus prescriptive grammar, Wallace digresses to discuss the legitimacy of Ebonics as opposed to "white male" standard English. (originally published in Harper's as "Tense Present: Democracy, English and Wars over Usage")[1]
- "The View from Mrs. Thompson's"
- Wallace's account of September 11th, 2001 as he experienced it in his hometown of Bloomington, Illinois, where he taught English at Illinois State University. To the surprise of many of his readers, Wallace refers to some of his neighbors as fellow church members (originally published in Rolling Stone)
- "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart"
- A (pained and scathing) review of tennis star Tracy Austin's autobiography, extending into a general critique of the mass-produced ghostwritten sports autobiographies then flooding the market (originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer)
- "Up, Simba"
- Wallace writes about John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, riding the bus famously called "The Straight Talk Express." The title is what a television news cameraman covering the campaign says before hoisting his camera onto his shoulder (originally published in Rolling Stone as "The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys And The Shrub" [2] and as an e-book through Random House's iPublish imprint; later republished in the context of the 2008 presidential race as McCain's Promise)
- "Consider the Lobster"
- Originally published in Gourmet, this review of the Maine Lobster Festival generated some controversy among the readers of the culinary magazine.[3] The essay is concerned with the ethics of boiling a creature alive in order to enhance the consumer's pleasure, including a discussion of lobster sensory neurons.
- "Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky"
- (originally published in the Village Voice Literary Supplement)
- "Host"
- A profile of John Ziegler, a Los Angeles-based conservative talk radio show host who is obsessed with the O. J. Simpson murders. Wallace examines the impact of Clear Channel-type media monopolies and the proliferation of talk radio on the way Americans talk, think, and vote. Instead of his trademark footnotes, the publication featured arrows that connected tangential ideas to each other on the page. The profile was originally published in The Atlantic, where it can be read online; the online version transforms the lines and boxes to hyperlinks, which were likely Wallace's inspiration.
The collection was published on 13 December 2005.
Critical reception
The book received positive reviews from critics. The review aggregator Metacritic reported the book had an average score of 68 out of 100, based on 15 reviews.[2]
Audiobook
An audiobook, read by Wallace himself, was published in 2005 by Time Warner Audiobooks. The three CD set contains complete readings of the following essays: “Consider the Lobster”, “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s”, “Big Red Son”, and “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart”.
External links
References
- ^ See AVN's Response to "Neither Adult Nor Entertainment" (mirror) for replies by AVN
- ^ "Consider The Lobster by David Foster Wallace: Reviews". Metacritic. Archived from the original on 2008-03-17. http://web.archive.org/web/20080317041933/http://www.metacritic.com/books/authors/wallacedavidfoster/considerthelobster. Retrieved 2008-02-17.
Works by David Foster Wallace Novels Story collections Nonfiction Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present (1990) · A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (1997) · Up, Simba! (2000) · Everything and More (2003) · Consider the Lobster (2005) · McCain's Promise (2008) · This Is Water (2009) · Fate, Time, and Language (2011)Related articles Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (film) · Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (2010)
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