beatsbybeard's review against another edition
5.0
Profoundly impressive collection of essays on subjects ranging from porn awards to grammar, from Updike to Dostoevsky, from sports biographies to 9/11, from John McCain's 2000 presidential bid to the state of mass-market talk radio, from Kafka to lobsters. Wallace's fiction (Infinite Jest being the prime example) is notoriously difficult to get through, and even though these essays and their sprawling footnotes sometimes reach peak density, he remains constantly engaging while picking out subtle shades within his subject's spectrum. His review of Bryan Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage becomes an absolute masterpiece investigation of language and its revelatory quality as it relates to its users. His coverage of McCain's campaign in 2000 for Rolling Stone highlights the ways in which the technicians who go from campaign to campaign manning cameras and boom mics and internet connections are more savvy political analysts than the professional analysts themselves. Wallace is opinionated and rhetorically motivated – that is, he is trying to prove something. But it is always in the most democratic of spirits, never authoritarian or condescending, always respectful of both the audience and the material, hence the deftness with which he can write about lobster festivals and Russian literature in equal measure. There are so many pieces of the current zeitgeist that beg for Wallace's insight – identity politics, celebrity culture, this demonic hellspawn of an election – and it's sad that we lost him as early as we did. This collection reminds us of exactly what and why we're missing.
snivets's review
5.0
Obviously incredible, full of wit and some stylistic examples of what makes Infinite Jest so great without requiring 1,400 pages read to see.
tbauman's review against another edition
4.0
Others have said it much better than I can: David Foster Wallace is an engaging, smart, and funny writer. His essays' points of view are just fringe enough to be interesting, but just mainstream enough to be accessible. I didn't always agree with his point of view, but I always found his analysis of the topic fascinating. I particularly enjoyed the essays on Standard Written English, sports autobiographies, and John McCain. Wallace managed to take essays that others would write simply and directly and make them deep and thought-provoking. For example, the titular "Consider the Lobster" begins as coverage of a lobster festival in Maine but ends as soul-searching over whether it's ethical to eat meat. Some essays stood out less--as a not particularly literary person, I found the Updike, Kafka, and Dostoevsky essays boring since I've never read any of their work. I also had mixed feelings about the footnotes--I often found it much easier to read the essays that had no footnotes because they were originally published in magazines. On the whole, this was a fun and easy-to-read book, and I learned something too.
aaniere's review against another edition
This was one of the most compelling reads of the summer thus far. My favorite story was his illustration of his town after 9/11, with Consider the Lobster a close second. I am really falling in love with his writing because it's so multifaceted. Consider the Lobster was deeply technical, creating the story and case for morality of eating lobster with science and comprehensive detail. I never thought I would have enjoyed hearing about the different ways an animal could be killed. But with the backdrop of the Maine Lobster Festival, it was a perfect case study of American culture. In the same way, his story about 9/11 showed facets of American culture as well. I loved the vinette of trying to get an American flag to fit in with the rest of the neighborhood. The story's finale, DFW realizing his neighbor's perception of America and New York, and feeling a likeness to pity for them really struck me. His writing is uber specific, he will describe a scene in such detail that you can basically taste it, while making a case about society and culture in the 21st century.
(The audiobook I listened to only had the following stories "Consider the Lobster", "The View from Mrs. Thompson's", "Big Red Son" and "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart". I would love to finish the rest of the essays)
Quotes that resonated w me:
-“Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I'm bullshitting myself, morally speaking?”
-“Truly decent, innocent people can be taxing to be around.”
-“ To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.”
-" What the Bloomington ladies are, or start to seem, is innocent. There is what would strike many Americans as a bizarre absence of cynicism in the room. It doesn’t once occur to anyone here to remark on how it’s maybe a little odd that all three network anchors are in shirtsleeves, or to consider that it’s possible that Rather’s hair being mussed is not 100% accidental, or that the relentless rerunning of spectacular footage might not be just in case some viewers were only now tuning in and hadn’t seen it yet. No one else seems to notice Bush’s weird little lightless eyes seem to get closer and closer together throughout his taped statement, nor that some of his lines sound almost plagiaristically identical to statements made by Bruce Willis (as a right-wing wacko, recall) in The Siege a couple years back. Nor that at least some of the shock of the last two hours has been how closely various shots and scenes have mirrored the plots of everything from Die Hard I-III and Air Force One to Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor. Nobody’s edgy or sophisticated enough to lodge the sick and obvious po-mo complaint: We’ve Seen This Before. Instead what they do is all sit together and feel really bad, and pray. Nobody does anything as nauseous as try to make everybody all pray together of pray aloud or anything, but you can tell what they’re doing.
Make no mistake: This is mostly a good thing. It makes you think and do things you probably wouldn’t if watching alone, like for one thing to pray, silently and fervently, that you’re wrong about Bush, that your view of him is distorted and he’s actually far smarter and more substantial than you believe, not just some weird soulless golem or nexus of interests dressed up in a suit, but a statesman of courage and probity and … and it’s good, this is good to pray this way. It’s just a little lonely to have to. Innocent people can be hard to be around. I’m not for a moment claiming that everyone in Bloomington is like this (Mrs. T.’s son F– isn’t, though he’s an outstanding person). I’m trying to explain the way part of the horror of the Horror was knowing that whatever America the men in those planes hated so much was far more my own – mine, and F–’s, and poor old loathsome Duane’s – than these ladies’."
-"So then here is a question that’s all but unavoidable at the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, and may arise in kitchens across the U.S.: Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? A related set of concerns: Is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental? What does “all right” even mean in this context? Is it all just a matter of individual choice?"
-"The truth is that if you, the Festival attendee, permit yourself to think that lobsters can suffer and would rather not, the MLF can begin to take on aspects of something like a Roman circus or medieval torture-fest. Does that comparison seem a bit much? If so, exactly why? Or what about this one: Is it not possible that future generations will regard our own present agribusiness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero’s entertainments or Aztec sacrifices? My own immediate reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme—and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human beings"
-
(The audiobook I listened to only had the following stories "Consider the Lobster", "The View from Mrs. Thompson's", "Big Red Son" and "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart". I would love to finish the rest of the essays)
Quotes that resonated w me:
-“Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I'm bullshitting myself, morally speaking?”
-“Truly decent, innocent people can be taxing to be around.”
-“ To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.”
-" What the Bloomington ladies are, or start to seem, is innocent. There is what would strike many Americans as a bizarre absence of cynicism in the room. It doesn’t once occur to anyone here to remark on how it’s maybe a little odd that all three network anchors are in shirtsleeves, or to consider that it’s possible that Rather’s hair being mussed is not 100% accidental, or that the relentless rerunning of spectacular footage might not be just in case some viewers were only now tuning in and hadn’t seen it yet. No one else seems to notice Bush’s weird little lightless eyes seem to get closer and closer together throughout his taped statement, nor that some of his lines sound almost plagiaristically identical to statements made by Bruce Willis (as a right-wing wacko, recall) in The Siege a couple years back. Nor that at least some of the shock of the last two hours has been how closely various shots and scenes have mirrored the plots of everything from Die Hard I-III and Air Force One to Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor. Nobody’s edgy or sophisticated enough to lodge the sick and obvious po-mo complaint: We’ve Seen This Before. Instead what they do is all sit together and feel really bad, and pray. Nobody does anything as nauseous as try to make everybody all pray together of pray aloud or anything, but you can tell what they’re doing.
Make no mistake: This is mostly a good thing. It makes you think and do things you probably wouldn’t if watching alone, like for one thing to pray, silently and fervently, that you’re wrong about Bush, that your view of him is distorted and he’s actually far smarter and more substantial than you believe, not just some weird soulless golem or nexus of interests dressed up in a suit, but a statesman of courage and probity and … and it’s good, this is good to pray this way. It’s just a little lonely to have to. Innocent people can be hard to be around. I’m not for a moment claiming that everyone in Bloomington is like this (Mrs. T.’s son F– isn’t, though he’s an outstanding person). I’m trying to explain the way part of the horror of the Horror was knowing that whatever America the men in those planes hated so much was far more my own – mine, and F–’s, and poor old loathsome Duane’s – than these ladies’."
-"So then here is a question that’s all but unavoidable at the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, and may arise in kitchens across the U.S.: Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? A related set of concerns: Is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental? What does “all right” even mean in this context? Is it all just a matter of individual choice?"
-"The truth is that if you, the Festival attendee, permit yourself to think that lobsters can suffer and would rather not, the MLF can begin to take on aspects of something like a Roman circus or medieval torture-fest. Does that comparison seem a bit much? If so, exactly why? Or what about this one: Is it not possible that future generations will regard our own present agribusiness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero’s entertainments or Aztec sacrifices? My own immediate reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme—and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human beings"
-
punkrockingnerd's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
2.5
Some essays are good (namely the Kafka and Lobster ones) but the rest are just kinda meh and go on for a little too long for my taste. I like researched topics, but idk man, maybe DFW goes a lil too in-depth for me, fingers crossed Infinite Jest goes well
bendubie's review against another edition
5.0
A master of insight. Essays on topics I would have no inclination towards were it not for Wallace’s musings on them.
hockeymonday's review against another edition
4.0
All of the essays were particularly good. Here are some comments about two and specific:
Consider The Lobster: perhaps one of the best essays of it's kind. Insightful through and through in such a matter of fact way yet presents some truths that are not at all self-evident. This has to be among some of my favorite essays ever written.
Big Red Son: in a condemnation of the very award show he refers to one can't help but wonder if the author himself has derived joy from the topic at hand. It seems to pour through subconsciously every so often in his writing in perhaps a way he himself is unaware of. All of the grotesque detail to me seemed largely unnecessary at times.
Consider The Lobster: perhaps one of the best essays of it's kind. Insightful through and through in such a matter of fact way yet presents some truths that are not at all self-evident. This has to be among some of my favorite essays ever written.
Big Red Son: in a condemnation of the very award show he refers to one can't help but wonder if the author himself has derived joy from the topic at hand. It seems to pour through subconsciously every so often in his writing in perhaps a way he himself is unaware of. All of the grotesque detail to me seemed largely unnecessary at times.
edick's review against another edition
funny
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
My first Foster Wallace. I am now ready for Infinite Jest. Not actually. He has a really enjoyable voice, approaching his subjects with a great, soft cynicism that avoids being insufferable by a vast margin. Definitely someone to come back to!