Wallace retains uniqueness in ‘Lobster’ essays
Essays by David Foster Wallace would be recognizable without his name attached. His relentless curiosity, his earnestness, his generous spirit, his often goofy tone, his erudition (which seems strange coming after the word “goofy,” but that is part of his uniqueness) and even his use of footnotes in magazines that otherwise eschew footnotes contribute to his recognizability.
Wallace’s essays, short stories and novels are so familiar, it seems he has been around forever. The fact is, he has barely achieved middle age (born in 1962) and did not become a well-known writer until 1996, when his 1,000-page novel “Infinite Jest” bowled over reviewers and readers.
“Consider the Lobster” collects 10 essays published in the Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone and Harper’s, as well as other magazines and newspapers.
Throughout the collection’s title essay, from Gourmet magazine, Wallace wonders whether lobsters feel pain when they are placed alive in boiling water for human consumption. It reads at times like an encyclopedia article about a form of life lower than human but mighty interesting to contemplate, at times like a cookbook entry minus the recipes, and at times like a treatise on ethics. Always it is something that only Wallace would have written.
Other essays in this collection cover the writing career of John Updike, trying to teach the fiction of Franz Kafka, the state of American lexicography, the reaction to Sept. 11 in a small Illinois city, the tennis life of star player Tracy Austin, U.S. Sen. John McCain wrestling with political campaigning as the nation prepared to choose a president in 2000, a new biography of novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the world of a late-night radio talk-show host.
An essay about the adult film industry’s ceremony at which the equivalent of the Academy Awards are presented would seem so simple to make interesting that any fool could proceed. But it is difficult to do well, given porn film star stereotypes and many readers’ revulsion toward graphic cinematic sex. Wallace transcends the stereotypes (and maybe the revulsion) to show that adult film workers are laborers, somewhat more visible than the average Hollywood star.
“Consider the Lobster” carries a subtext, which is “Consider the Writer.” It is difficult to know from the printed page how much of his quirkiness is organic and how much of it is studied. Whatever the answer, it is always welcome.