A Democratic Spirit is one that combines rigor and humility, ie, passionate conviction plus a sedulous respect for the convictions of others. As any American knows, this is a difficult spirit to cultivate and maintain, particularly when it comes to issues you feel strongly about. Equally tough is a DS’s criterion of 100 percent intellectual integrity – you have to be willing to look honestly at yourself and at your motives for believing what you believe, and to do it more or less continually.

- From the essay “Authority and American Usage”

The above is what David Foster Wallace’s essays seem to embody; 100% intellectual integrity, honesty, passion and respect for the reader. When I didn’t agree with him (for example I’m totally not down with his insistence on mostly using the unmarked masculine), I continued to admire his approach and his commitment to this Democratic Spirit. I always felt, here’s a person I could reason with about this. He writes with the kind of presence that should probably be called accountability, and feels like a rare and luxurious commodity: clean air.

What Kafka’s stories have[…] is a grotesque, gorgeous and thoroughly modern complexity, an ambivalence that becomes the multivalent Both/And logic of the, quote, “unconscious,” which I personally think is just a fancy word for soul. Kafka’s humour – not only not neurotic but anti-neurotic, heroically sane – is, finally, a religious humour, but religious in the manner of Rilke and Kierkegaard and the Psalms, a harrowing spirituality…

And it is this, I think, that makes Kafka’s wit inaccessible to children whom our culture has trained to see jokes as entertainment and entertainment as reassurance. It’s not that students don’t “get” Kafka’s humour but that we’ve taught them to see humour as something you get - the same way we’ve taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.

- From the essay, “Some Notes on Kafka’s Funniness”

And we keep learning for years, from hard experience, that getting lied to sucks – that it diminishes you, denies you respect for yourself, for the liar, for the world. Especially if the lies are chronic, systemic, if experience seems to teach that everything you’re supposed to believe in’s really just a game based on lies.

- From the essay “Up, Simba”

The title essay perfectly exemplifies DFW’s insistence on intellectual honesty. Covering the Maine Lobster festival for a foodie mag, he writes in a disarmingly personal and heartfelt way about how awful the whole thing was, how depressing:

As I see it, it probably really is good for the soul to be a tourist, even if it's only once in a while. Not good for the soul in a refreshing or enlivening way, though, but rather in a grim, steely-eyed, let's-look-honestly-at-the-facts-and-find-some-way-to-deal-with-them way. My personal experience has not been that traveling around the country is broadening or relaxing, or that radical changes in place and context have a salutary effect, but rather that intranational tourism is radically constricting, and humbling in the hardest way - hostile to my fantasy of being a true individual, of living somehow outside and above it all. 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 non-economic 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.

As an omnivore, Wallace asks us to consider the lobster who, judging by her behaviour, does suffer while being boiled to death and would rather not be boiled to death. There’s no honest way of thinking your way out of this, he concludes, unhappily. He addresses his foodie audience who I can’t imagine were expecting this in their mag: how do you folks deal with this? I eat animals and want to go on doing it, how do I live with myself? Well, easy for me to read this (and answer) as a vegan. This could be the most effective piece of veg*n outreach ever written by a non veg*n. How many writers have ever had the courage to think themselves into a corner?

The interview and face are riveting television entertainment. It’s almost impossible to look away, or not to feel that special kind of guilty excitement in the worst, most greedy and indecent parts of yourself. You can really feel it: This is why drivers slow down to gape at accidents, why reporters put mics in the faces of bereaved relatives, why the Haidl gang-rape trial is a hit single that merits heavy play, why the cruelest forms of reality TV and tabloid news and talk radio generate such good numbers. But that doesn’t mean the fascination is good, or even feels good. Aren’t there parts of ourselves that are just better left unfed?

First a declaration of interest: anything by Wallace gets a 5 star review from me.

David Foster Wallace was a truly a literary virtuoso – talent on a stick - with a style indebted to Mark Twain, seen as a major influence on his work.

I read the book a few years ago but have splashed out to get the Audible app so I could listen to this collection of essays narrated by the author himself – a marvellous gift from beyond the grave made possible by modern technology, though a poignant experience too.

Wallace has an unemotional delivery which can become almost hypnotic, but it suits the documentary style of the articles. Audio footnotes following the threads of his thought are also included by the technique of Wallace changing his tone of voice– which sounds unlikely, but seems to work in the way of anecdotal asides.

This collection of ten extended articles were originally published in magazines such as Rolling Stone, Harpers and – in the case of the eponymous essay – in the August 2004 edition of Gourmet, commissioned for the Maine Lobster Festival. Re-visiting it reminds me of why I became a vegetarian because of the way lobsters are cooked. Wallace turns his investigation into an ethical debate about eating sentient (i.e. able to feel pain) creatures - though apparently it did not convert him to vegetarianism.

The other subjects he covers, in his inimitable style, vary from the highbrow, ranging through linguistics and literary criticism, US culture and the attack on the Twin Towers, to the lowbrow lexicon of adult entertainment (porn) and sports memoirs.

Абсолютно блестяще, возможно лучшая публицистика (репортажка? документальная проза?) что я читал в жизни.

easy 5 stars. my fav essays were “Authority and American Usage” and “How Tracy Austin Broke my Heart.” Although, I genuinely loved all of them. I’m gonna need to buy all his books now lol, DFW has certainly become one of my favorite authors!

DFW turns his mordant wit to some peculiarities of 90s and early 00s USA. Topics covered include: pornstar awards ceremonies, lobster festivals, 9/11, Updike, dictionaries, Dostoevsky, right wing talk radio, the McCain 2000 campaign, and of course DFW’s beloved tennis. This collection is at once both a bit of a fascinating time capsule from that period and something still very representative of today’s world, USA or no. You’ll have a lotta fun reading about stuff you may have only paid cursory attention to before. DFW is very clever but not in a way that might rankle, rather he’ll make you keen to read/learn more.

So let's get this out of the way: intellectually Wallace trounces Klosterman and Gladwell and still has more than enough left over to bounce David Brooks or any other pop-essayist du jour.

This collection is actually better, more substantial, than the essays in "A Supposedly Fun Thing..." It's nothing I can exactly single out, except that this group of essays came across as more polished, professional, but no less amusing and illuminating. In the course of reading these, I've had the pleasure of pondering what it is I get wrong about Kafka and Dostoevsky, the plight of the (post)modern politician, the rise of conservative radio, and why grammar matters (and I mean REALLY MATTERS).

Wallace's real talent is in explicating a point, then noting some of the inconsistencies, ironies, and contradictions inherent in that point, and finally articulating why those ironies and contradictions exist and why they matter or don't matter. Remember Shrek? Ogres are like onions because they have layers? Only Wallace's ogre is our current reality and it's one tough onion!

That said, there is one clunker in the bunch. The 9/11 essay 'The View From Mrs. Thompson's', which feels contrived, manipulative, and falls well short of what I would guess Wallace intended. Granted, this is a tough subject to approach for any writer and direct emotional appeal has never been Wallace's strength, so it should come as no surprise to us that it falls flat. What would have been a lovely essay, perhaps, would be Wallace's explication of the difficulties of writing about 9/11.

A series of lucid, well-written, essays on a variety of topics. Reminiscent of John McPhee's better essays with a moral tinge, a linkage of the aesthetic with the moral, if you will. The one on the reaction of people in Bloomington/Normal Illinois to 9/11 is both insightful and poignant. I especially liked the way he handled the issue of pain in the lobster: unhysterical, rational, and detailed with correct information. He asks if gastronomes, i.e. those who delight in the preparation and presentation of food, think much about “the moral status and probable suffering of the animals involved, and, if so, what ethical system have they “worked out to enjoy gastronomic culture. Is it the product of actual thought? Or do you just not want to think about it?” Will the Maine Lobster festival be seen decades from now much as we view the Roman games?

This is not the kind of book you want to listen to in the car with your kids or grand-kids. In the third essay, his descriptions of events at the Adult Video awards (which began in 1982 coincident with the rise of VCRs.) The exhibits at their convention got even my normally unflappable nature perturbed. The idea that an exhibitor would have a starlet squatting on his table masturbating with a riding crop was a bit much. The judges for the awards have to sit through the equivalent of 1.4 years of sexual coupling and after their eyes glazed over I suspect their “members” (to quote Fanny Hill) probably locked into a permanently flaccid state much like workers in chocolate factories who are permitted to eat all the chocolate they want, soon develop a positive distaste for the stuff.

All of this leads me to an observation. Many of the essays reveal a deep concern on the part of Wallace for wanting to examine all the moral ramifications of his subject. I'm beginning to understand why he committed suicide. He must have deeply disturbed by what he discovered.

The most striking thing about this set of essays by the late David Foster Wallace is that they are written in the familiar, cynical style of American gonzo journalism, but underneath that veneer they are the furthest thing in the world from cynical. They are deeply sincere, heartfelt and searching meditations on the most important questions all human beings face: meaning, suffering, identity, love, and our duties to each other. Although he was not religious in the way we think of that word, the questions he asks and longings he expresses are deeply related to religion. The first essay is a report from a pornographic film awards convention. It is laugh out loud funny, while also managing to somehow be heartfelt despite its necessarily vulgar subject matter. The essays on Dostoyevsky, experiencing the September 11th attacks in Bloomington, and the ethics of cooking lobster are all profoundly sincere in their probing.

Wallace was a less misanthropic relative to Michel Houellebecq in some ways. He was keenly aware of the ills of his society and was not insensitive to them. If anything they seemed to deeply wound him. Like most of us he had been taught that the only way that the pathos of the human condition can be confronted is while wearing a thick defensive armor of ironic detachment. The inadequacies of this approach soon become evident to those who really take such matters to heart. His concern did not just stop with human beings but extended to all living things. While "Consider the Lobster" might be a funny and detached title for a book – and indeed the essay is written in such a style – it is a serious meditation on spiritual questions not dissimilar to Tolstoy.

Wallace's later suicide gives these essays an air of tragedy and poignancy beyond themselves. Some of the themes, like political talk radio (although this had some resonances with social media punditry), John McCain, and the dictionary wars either felt a bit dated or arcane. Nonetheless I find that the author was a real genius and sensitive person. I will likely read more of his work.

Consider the Lobster and Other Essays has insightful commentary on the human condition. Here are my comments on essays that stood out to me:

One that is particularly thought-provoking is "Authority and American Usage." It delineates between prescriptivist language commonly used by the left; versus, descriptivist, commonly used by the right. This difference creates a social dichotomy in dialogue. Descriptivist language can go against political correctness, wherein one's position gets discounted by perceived privilege in social hierarchy: whereas prescriptivist language can be considered emotive and overlook the nucleus of an issue in favour of political correctness.

I dock a star for overly cynical essays (I acknowledge that this is a subjective criticism): these include "Up Simba," and "Big Red Son." However, I'm not surprised by his tilt considering DFW' personal history.

Some of his most insightful essays on the human condition are "Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed," and "Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky."

Finally, the essay "Consider the Lobster" is a pertinent study of morality. It is characteristically wonderful – written against a particularly immersive and engaging backdrop of the Maine Lobster Festival – in vogue of Gonzo-Journalism.

(Ceci n'est pas une review, but I'm getting tired of just rating and adding status updates)

Thought maybe this was worth 4.7666666666666665 stars, but what the hell, there isn't going to be any more, so....'Up, Simba' wrestles in my affections with the cruise ship essay, it's that good. Big Red Son, Tracy Austin, lobsters, Dostoevsky, Kafka, 9/11, gutting Updike, all amazing....the _one_ thing I don't like is the Host essay, which seems a little long and (gasp) pointless, altho with a stunning conclusion. But I just detest the guy he's profiling, and I don't think the boxes work as well as footnotes. It feels a little more scattershot and dark than 'Supposedly Fun,' but I still love it. I'm rereading 'Up, Simba' right now to cushion my psyche from the horribleness of Shelley's love life.

INFINITE JEST GROUP REREAD THIS SUMMER Y/Y?

Have you ever experienced an intellectual fascination so intense that it compelled you to explore every author favored by the individual in question? That is what brought DFW more to my attention, a writer I had previously considered too intricate, masculinely inclined, and postmodern to align with my traditional and feminine sensibilities.

But having read this, there's little room for doubt in my mind that David Foster Wallace was a writer of exceptional talent, his profound intelligence and extensive erudition apparent in his essays. His works exemplify the art of deep thinking, demonstrating an acute awareness of the complexities of the world. He does not only think profoundly and originally, but also widely, horizontally and vertically. Wallace conveys his intellectual prowess without being overbearing, presenting essays that reveal a multidimensional author - brilliant, and captivatingly unpredictable in his choice of subjects of essays. A diverse range of topics in these essays includes pornography (a personal favorite), the works of Updike, Kafka, and Dostoevsky, the life of Tracy Austin, McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, the distinction between descriptive and prescriptive grammar, all the way to the ethics of boiling lobsters alive.

"At the essence of pornography is the image of flesh used as a drug, a way of numbing psychic pain. But this drug lasts only as long as the man stares at the image…. In pornographic perception, each gesture, each word, each image, is read first and foremost through sexuality. Love or tenderness, pity or compassion, become subsumed by, and are made subservient to, a “greater” deity, a more powerful force…. The addict to pornography desires to be blinded, to live in a dream. Those in the thrall of pornography try to eliminate from their consciousness the world outside pornography, and this includes everything from their family and friends or last Sunday’s sermon to the political situation in the Middle East. In engaging in such elimination the viewer reduces himself. He becomes stupid."

His selection of topics suggests a commitment to his philosophy: a great mind can never be bored and it finds fascination in any subject it delves into. His linguistic richness and structural innovation showcase a mind of a genius, able to extract detailed intellectual constructions from banal events, and the binary thinking prevalent in modern society. He might be the one writer who captured the essence of the philosopher’s stone with his writing - his written word can turn anything into gold.

Wallace is not only smart for the sake of being smart, but he is also smart because he cares about the world. DFW's writing is not only articulate and intelligent but also sensitive and subtly emotional. His reflective analysis is characterized by a hyper-reflection and freedom of rambling that might seem inconsequential to others but is precisely what attracts certain readers to his work.

In his works, Wallace communicates his inner world of a melancholic idealist, a tormented truth-seeker who grapples with imposter syndrome, the great plague of all intelligent people, candidly and transparently. Superficially, some might label Wallace as pretentious due to his interpolations, digressions, and pseudo-philosophies - qualities that serve as both strengths and weaknesses. However, dismissing him as such overlooks the authenticity, goodness, and humility that infuse his writing. What sets Wallace apart from classical pretentious intellectual narcissists is his deep-seated concern for the world and sensitivity to what means to be a human. His intellectual self-absorption is balanced by his vulnerability, a quality that lays his emotions bare. While DFW remains the center of his universe, what a universe it is: captivating yet often bleak.

Much like how he analyzed Dostoyevsky, DFW navigates morality without moralizing. He delves into intricate ethical dilemmas without resorting to shortcuts that lead to logical fallacies. He doesn't claim to possess all the answers, instead meticulously examining moral conflicts, sometimes leaving readers with more questions than resolutions, and an underlying existential turmoil. Although deciphering Wallace's political or religious beliefs from his writing might be challenging, his ambiguity and struggle with his own hypocrisy add a vital layer of authenticity to his work.

Wallace's sentiments echo those of a lost soul, passionate about searching for answers but struggling to find them, for himself and for others, with his internal conflict subtly painting his transfixing thought process. His analysis often doesn't reach a synthesis, consumed as he is by unanswerable worldly questions. He feels and thinks too deeply - both his greatest blessing and curse that leads into the abyss of depression.

Wallace believed that the capital Truth resides in free will. However, this realization comes with a heavy burden of perpetual self-assessment, fostering isolation, intense self-absorption, and overwhelming self-awareness. Once you acknowledge that your own flaws are nothing but a result of your own doing, the scope of hyper-reflexivity becomes limitless. Moreover, the responsibility of making crucial decisions that determine your destiny can instill insurmountable pressure to rely solely on yourself.

Irrespective of the topic, Wallace consistently seeks the essence of phenomena. His analysis of contemporary society is fundamentally metaphysical and subversive. He critiques solipsism, arguing that the current social structures breed egocentrism, fear, loneliness, and sorrow. Ironically, DFW himself is profoundly and transparently self-centered in an infinite quest for peace of his own mind.

Wallace's endorsement of self-sacrifice seems rooted in self-interest -the idea that sacrificing oneself is necessary to ultimately save oneself. Despite his genuine desire to care for others, his philosophy revolves around the self, often contemplating the false self and grappling to unearth the authentic one. This creates an individual who is both astute in perception and profoundly isolated, his keen observations of the world leaving him detached.

“Is it possible really to love other people? If I’m lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential relief—I need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isn’t a big part of love caring more about what the other person needs? How am I supposed to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody else’s needs that I can’t even feel directly? And yet if I can’t do this, I’m damned to loneliness, which I definitely don’t want …so I’m back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons. Is there any way out of this bind?”

Wallace left nothing unexamined, even his self-centredness, which transforms his narcissism into charm, avoiding the trap of becoming hollow intellectualization. He embodies the paradox of deeply caring for others while remaining intensely focused on himself.

The versatileness of his writing which at times borders with stream-of-consciousness ramblings does not take away from his recognisability in different essays, his signature wit and style, style only being simplification in an absence of a better word, but more of the personality and charm, his spirit, the sign of the true canonical writer, as he himself describes the great writers, the kind one can recognize within paragraphs. The interpolation is palpable in his work, and footnotes often contain even more profound material than the main text. This isn't accidental; it's an embodiment of his philosophical approach to thought, the pursuit of truth in the overlooked corners rather than the obvious center.
DFW is working at the edge, posing obscure questions about the bizarre, mad world we live in, in an equally bizarre yet innovative manner. It is a wild ride being inside his brain, even for a few essays.

It is rightful to label Wallace a postmodern philosopher, a hero of hypersensitive, mordant, rueful and lonely observers of the world. His writing serves as an exercise in inquisitive, creative, experimental thinking that stretches the limits of comprehension. It testifies to the potency of a brilliant artist's ability to challenge and encourage readers to contemplate in ways they wouldn't otherwise, without access to profound literature.

Consider the Lobster, consider great literature and consider DFW.

Consider the Lobster is most definitely a mixed bag—these essays, collected in 2006, don't seem to have any unifying thread, other than David Foster Wallace's unmistakable style—and that isn't the selling point it once was. After all, Wallace's own star has dimmed quite a bit since Consider the Lobster was published, and his prose has become substantially more difficult to read with innocent eyes—even when he's not focused directly on porn, as in:

Big Red Son (1998)

Consider the Lobster certainly starts with a bang (and a moan, and a whimper):

The American Academy of Emergency Medicine confirms it: Each year, between one and two dozen adult US males are admitted to ERs after having castrated themselves.
—p.3

I started reading Wallace's pre-millennial essay about attending the annual Adult Video News Awards gala in Las Vegas while I was at work, which was a little embarrassing... but I needn't have worried. This is still David Foster Wallace; his sesquipedalian prose, full of circumlocutions and asides, and the usual collection of voluminous footnotes all helped disguise his salacious subject.

(And no, you're right, this has nothing to do with lobsters, cooked or otherwise—the book's eponymous essay arrives much later.)

This is the "money" quote (as it were):

"Nobody ever goes broke overestimating the rage and misogyny of the average American male."
—p.35, from "Industry journalist Harold Hecuba"

Thank goodness that's no longer true, at least...

Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think (1998)

The pivot from porn to the "Great Male Narcissists" of American letters—Norman Mailer, John Updike and Philip Roth—turns out to be... not much of a leap, actually.

Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed (1999)

I have very little to say about this one either, other than to recommend the otherwise-unrelated SF anthology Kafkaesque: Stories Inspired by Franz Kafka, which also makes note of Kafka's underrated sense of humor.

Authority and American Usage (1999)

In which Wallace wanders into some very deep weeds. You may like that—even if you lean Descriptivist. However, also bear in mind Cecelia Watson's assessment of this essay, in her book Semicolon:

Where Wallace sees moral high ground lush with the fruits of knowledge, I see a desolate valley, in which the pleasures of speaking "properly" and following rules have choked out the very basic ethical principle of giving a shit about what other people have to say.
—p.170

Wallace himself seems to take the distinction between Prescriptivists and Descriptivists rather personally.

Little kids learn this stuff not in Language Arts or Social Studies but on the playground and the bus and at lunch. When his peers are ostracizing the SNOOTlet or giving him monstrous quadruple Wedgies or holding him down and taking turns spitting on him, there's serious learning going on.
—p.103, "Authority and American Usage"

This comes very close to being a justification for schoolyard bullying, which is... a hard sell for me, even if (especially when) considering that I'm something of a "SNOOT" myself. (Wallace provides a couple of expansions for his acronym, by the way, but basically "SNOOT"="grammar nerd.")

He goes on to discuss the need for "code-switching," although without using that term:

One is punished in class, the other on the playground, but both are deficient in the same linguistic skill—viz., the ability to move between various dialects and levels of "correctness," the ability to communicate one way with peers and another way with teachers and another with family and another with T-ball coaches and so on.
—p.104

The View from Mrs. Thompson's (2001)

Watching 9/11 on live TV in Bloomington, Indiana, and needing (as so many of us did)

{...}to pray, silently and fervently, that you're wrong about the president{...}
—p.140

How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart (1994)

Wallace's own history as a competitive tennis player informs this essay about, among other things, the role of sheer bad luck in Austin's career trajectory, and the difference between being good at a sport and being articulate about that ability.

Up, Simba (2000)

Wallace managed to snag a gig as an embedded reporter (for Rolling Stone) with Bob Dole's ill-fated run for the Republican presidential nomination back in Y2K. The resulting article is very much "Davey Does Gonzo"—but this much is true:

In reality, there is no such thing as not voting; you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.
—p.207 (emphasis in original)

As exhausting as it must have been for Wallace to tour (even for a week) with Dole's campaign, he still had the energy to come up with several trenchant observations:

There is a difference between a great leader and a great salesman. There are also similarities, of course. A great salesman is usually charismatic and likable, and he can often get us to do things (buy things, agree to things) that we might not go for on our own, and to feel good about it. Plus a lot of salesmen are basically decent people with plenty about them to admire. But even a truly great salesman isn't a leader. This is because a salesman's ultimate, overriding motivation is self-interest—if you buy what he's selling, the salesman profits. So even though the salesman may have a very powerful, charismatic, admirable personality, and might even persuade you that buying is in your interests (and it really might be)—still, a little part of you always knows that what the salesman's ultimately after is something for himself. And this awareness is painful...
—p.226

Although this sentence was originally written with Bob Dole in mind, I think it may be more self-referential than that:

And but now the paradox here is that this box that makes {him} "real" is, by definition, locked. Impenetrable. Nobody gets in or out.
—paraphrased from p.234

Consider the Lobster (2004)

This gloss on Wallace's visit to Maine's annual lobster festival needs no further explanation:

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 non-economic ways would be better, realer, without you.
—p.240, footnote 6

Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky (1996)

I overlooked this one entirely in my first posted version of this review... which I guess means I have nothing to say about it. I do regret the omission, though—Fyodor Dostoevsky, not to mention biographer Joseph Frank, deserves better!

Host (2005)

"Host," the final essay in Consider the Lobster, pays altogether too much attention to a minor right-wing talk-radio personality in Los Angeles, and his obsession with O.J. Simpson. In this one, Wallace eschews his beloved footnotes altogether, in favor of a frankly even more confusing patchwork of flowchart-style arrows pointing to boxes inset above, below, beside and sometimes athwart the main text of the article, which on p.343 eventually, abruptly, just... ends. As does the book.

*

I can't really say Consider the Lobster was a disappointment, because I did not go into it with high expectations. After all, Wallace's own star has dimmed quite a bit since he took himself out of the picture in 2008, and his prose has only become more difficult to read uncritically as that event recedes into the distance.

Consider the Lobster is also the last—that is, the last of Wallace's books that I hadn't read... and it's probably the last one I'm going to read, or reread. (For one example: I don't think I'll ever have the stamina to revisit Infinite Jest even though I haven't reviewed Wallace's most amazing achievement here, since my prior bouts with it were pre-Goodreads.)

And yet, but still, as always... there's a lot here to appreciate, and to absorb. Even now.