jbmorgan86's review against another edition
3.0
Have you ever had a conversation with a person who is clearly brilliant but their rambling and social awkwardness makes you feel awkward? That's how I feel when I read David Foster Wallace.
DFW is clearly brilliant. His essays are filled with "hmmm" moments and (often dark and self-deprecatory) humor. However, his digressions make his writing such a challenge to read. I spotted a sentence within brackets within parenthesis within a footnote within an interpolation within an essay!
This essay collection is an odd assortment of essays: Is it humane to boil lobsters alive? What is "Academy Awards" of pornography like? Here's a 60 page review of a dictionary. Here's a review of a multi-volume review of a Dostoevsky biography. Why are sports autobiographies (usually) so bad? Why don't American college students understand Kafka's humor? DFW's experience of 9/11.
Some of these essays were quite laborious. Others, however are beautiful. I particularly enjoyed "The View from Mrs. Thompson's" where DFW poetically recounts his experience of 9/11 and how it impacted his local community. I also (surprisingly) enjoyed the essay "Authority and American Usage" (a review of a dictionary) where Wallace takes on the descriptive grammar vs. prescriptive grammar debate. The titular essay "Consider the Lobster" is informative, entertaining, and will make your skin crawl a bit.
DFW is clearly brilliant. His essays are filled with "hmmm" moments and (often dark and self-deprecatory) humor. However, his digressions make his writing such a challenge to read. I spotted a sentence within brackets within parenthesis within a footnote within an interpolation within an essay!
This essay collection is an odd assortment of essays: Is it humane to boil lobsters alive? What is "Academy Awards" of pornography like? Here's a 60 page review of a dictionary. Here's a review of a multi-volume review of a Dostoevsky biography. Why are sports autobiographies (usually) so bad? Why don't American college students understand Kafka's humor? DFW's experience of 9/11.
Some of these essays were quite laborious. Others, however are beautiful. I particularly enjoyed "The View from Mrs. Thompson's" where DFW poetically recounts his experience of 9/11 and how it impacted his local community. I also (surprisingly) enjoyed the essay "Authority and American Usage" (a review of a dictionary) where Wallace takes on the descriptive grammar vs. prescriptive grammar debate. The titular essay "Consider the Lobster" is informative, entertaining, and will make your skin crawl a bit.
moonshake's review against another edition
i started this book in washington and ended this book in misery
omnivorousabstraction's review against another edition
5.0
A friend recommended this book to me, and especially the title essay, 'Consider the Lobster'. His recommendation was a wise - it encapsulates DFW's genius. In it DFW uses his experience of the Maine Lobster Festival as a springboard for a sensitive, curious, and compassionate examination of our treatment of animals, and of the complexities of consciousness and pain. He probes into every nook and cranny of the matter, from the grisly practical vicissitudes of the lobster being cooked to every relevant dimension of philosophical uncertainty. Impressively, the essay manages to be playful and erudite without compromising its seriousness of thought, such that the tone is, as DFW praises Dostoevsky in another essay, 'moral without being moralistic'. The image of the lobster thrashing around in boiling water is a memorable one; DFW forges it into an emblem of everything that is uncomfortable about our killing and eating of other animals.
Before reading the book, I had only encountered one other work of DFW's, a student stage adaptation of 'Brief Interviews with Hideous Men'. So I was unaware of his distinctive qualities as an essayist. Spidery, monstrous footnotes pile up at the bottom of each page; distracting editorial asides break up the rhythm of prose; and he seems fond of almost ostentatious displays of erudition and technical learning. There is much that might put a reader off, in other words.
But I found that I did not lose interest for a moment. I think there are two reasons for this. One is the author's curiosity, which is so passionate and limitless that it sweeps you along with it. It is this curiosity that makes his investigate journalism uniquely powerful and engaging. He delves into every arcane detail of the phenomena of adult film ('Big Red Son'), the usage wars('Authority and American Usage'), the campaign trail ('Up, Simba'), and the eponymous lobster festival, and as he does so, the reader feels the impression of vast worlds, sweeping vistas opening up.
The other is his willingness, indeed his zeal, to engage honestly with complexity. The paradoxes of the Usage Wars and of political campaigning, for example, are subjected to a scrutiny which leaves no easy answer anywhere in sight. In not one of these essays does it feel as if DFW is taking up a position just for the sake of so doing - what he says comes from a very deep engagement with the matter under discussion. The constant footnotes and asides are part and parcel of this - DFW anticipates almost every single possible second-guess, every conceivable caveat, and acknowledges it. The result is a series of essays that are funny, honest, and relentlessly thought-provoking. Would highly recommend.
Before reading the book, I had only encountered one other work of DFW's, a student stage adaptation of 'Brief Interviews with Hideous Men'. So I was unaware of his distinctive qualities as an essayist. Spidery, monstrous footnotes pile up at the bottom of each page; distracting editorial asides break up the rhythm of prose; and he seems fond of almost ostentatious displays of erudition and technical learning. There is much that might put a reader off, in other words.
But I found that I did not lose interest for a moment. I think there are two reasons for this. One is the author's curiosity, which is so passionate and limitless that it sweeps you along with it. It is this curiosity that makes his investigate journalism uniquely powerful and engaging. He delves into every arcane detail of the phenomena of adult film ('Big Red Son'), the usage wars('Authority and American Usage'), the campaign trail ('Up, Simba'), and the eponymous lobster festival, and as he does so, the reader feels the impression of vast worlds, sweeping vistas opening up.
The other is his willingness, indeed his zeal, to engage honestly with complexity. The paradoxes of the Usage Wars and of political campaigning, for example, are subjected to a scrutiny which leaves no easy answer anywhere in sight. In not one of these essays does it feel as if DFW is taking up a position just for the sake of so doing - what he says comes from a very deep engagement with the matter under discussion. The constant footnotes and asides are part and parcel of this - DFW anticipates almost every single possible second-guess, every conceivable caveat, and acknowledges it. The result is a series of essays that are funny, honest, and relentlessly thought-provoking. Would highly recommend.
patrique's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
funny
informative
medium-paced
4.5
designwise's review against another edition
4.0
A little dated but I never grow tired of David Foster Wallace.