Niet elk onderwerp is even interessant, maar de stukken zijn allemaal goed geschreven dus heb me weer uitstekend vermaakt. Leukste stukken zijn imo die waarin hij ergens op reportage gaat.

DFW en modo periodista. Casi todo es buenísimo. Mi favorito personal es la reseña sobre el diccionario de uso del idioma inglés, donde entra bien a fondo en la polémica descriptivismo vs prescriptivismo. Políticamente el de McCain es muy jugoso, para los que en esa época no éramos conscientes de lo que significaba (un anticandidato populista! Que además es un Héroe Americano!). Se escapa la lagrimita con su crónica del 11S en una ciudad del medio oeste.

Si te lo lees en cuatro días, como yo, vas a llegar al final un poco empachado; sobre todo el último ensayo se atraganta un poco, cual si fuera pedazo de tarta chantilly en banquete de boda, con hojaldre hecho de notas que ya no son al pie sino intercaladas en el texto. Así que mejor degustarlo despacio.

Wallace was an amazing writer. He had an incredible mastery of the English language, expressing himself with apt and precise words to create an original voice and point of view. In my wildest dreams I could not write so well. His personality comes across as a mixture of a seriously smart academic mind with a down home Midwestern guy, who is reasonable, empathetic and just plain human.

The essays in this book are still very readable, but many of the subjects have changed drastically in the almost twenty years that have passed since they were written. The pornography business, presidential politics and the right wing talk radio business are all areas that have seen massive change. In some ways Wallace anticipated those changes, but the landscape is so extremely different today that some of Wallace's observations have become quaint. You can't fault Wallace for this, as he was writing magazine articles for a contemporary audience and was looking at the then current state of the American soul, not trying to predict the future. Still, some of it feels a bit dated.

My favorite essays in the book were the one on the dictionary of English usage and the one on Joseph Frank's books on Dostoevsky. These were on topics dear to my heart and not so much tied to current events. His point of view on usage is practical and smart and is borne out by the virtuosity of his own writing. In the Dostoevsky essay he gave me a somewhat new perspective on an author I already know well and have read extensively. I sometimes think of Dostoevsky as being too sentimental and stylistically sloppy, not in the same class as Tolstoy or Gogol, but Wallace reminded me of the wonderful worlds and characters that Dostoevsky creates that give us richness, beauty and a human dimension that unfold as the plots progress at breakneck speed. And the Joseph Frank point of view on Dostoevsky that Wallace discusses feels like a nice alternative perspective to contemporary literary theory and post-structuralism, which have always left me cold.

dfw was a really smart guy, and he wants you to know it

An eclectic collection of essays and articles from the late 90s and early 00s. It will surprise no one that DFW’s nonfiction writing is immaculate and thoughtful. I read Infinite Jest a few years ago with an amazing group here on Litsy, but have just now decided to explore his backlist. So far, so good! I wish that he was still with us creating, innovating, and challenging us as readers.

Antallet ganger jeg humret av ren intellektuell beundring, samt min øyeblikkelige frykt for å nå skulle uttrykke meg selv i det samme medium som forfatteren, er i seg selv et testament til hvor gode disse essayene var og hvor retorisk overlegen DFW fortsatt er.

Well, this was rather an interesting mess. DFW may have many talents, but he is not an author for me.

First, it is not useful to judge an author by a collection of pieces written for vastly different periodicals over a long period of time. And yet, the author surely had some say in collecting them; there is something in putting all of the pieces between covers and saying, this is my work, that invites such a judgement.

So -- a mess. Yes. Because what DFW seems to excel at is a sort of literary pyrotechnics, with footnotes and asides and direct statements to the reader which reminds me of nothing so much as J.D. Salinger's Buddy Glass in "Seymour: An Introduction" -- a story which I enjoyed and also found to be quite a mess. Any given one of these pieces stands on its own quite well; I think "Big Red Son" and "Host" -- despite the annoying typograhical methods of the latter which yes reflect certain things about radio very well but are nonetheless difficult to read -- both of those pieces in particular are works of craftsmanship with something to say about the world. (I am ignoring for the purposes of this review whether or not I think what is being said is useful or interesting or worthwhile, because I do not feel like I can judge that with so much stylistic shrubbery in my way.)

My difficulty is... DFW also wrote perfectly competent 'straight' essays, as is evident in this collection. And the underlying tone of the straight essays and the pyrotechnic pieces is very similar, it is the New Yorker Article Voice (I am sure there are better terms for it, but that is where I know it from), the voice suggesting that the author and reader are both intelligent people of the same group, and if the reader would just stretch their minds a little and see something from a slightly different point of view, they would gain valuable insight which might change their life. In the pieces filled with fireworks it is the same voice, the same appeal, but obscured by the excitement of the footnotes and asides and all -- so the same message, the same suggestion, just takes three times longer and is no more effective. The fireworks are not there because they are necessary, they are there because DFW is embarassed of writing the earnest tone, or simply tired of it, and so he will do a few tricks along the way to his final moment where he tells the reader what they should remember.

And that, for me, is a mess. What I value most in writing is the clear, the concrete, the solid, the ability to take the experience of being a human being (which is transient, messy, confused) and make it into something which can be seen, touched, felt. To turn life into art, to turn true experience into another sort of truth -- individual, yes, of course, but all the more meaningful for that. There are many ways to do so, and the ways I prefer are not the only or the best, but the end goal is the same. I think DFW perhaps tried for this goal, but he either did not trust himself, or he did not trust his reader, or perhaps he did not actually trust the goal, the goal that one might take a moment and turn it into something that means. So instead, the flash and the hiss and the boom, beautiful elaborations and contortions of writing, but nothing that stays inside my mind after I walk away. A pity, that, but there are many other things to read.

Upon further examination and review, the first essay, Big Red Son is one of the funniest things I've ever read. The titular essay is better in spoken word. Up, Simba proves how awful the political process is. The remaining essays didn't interest me as much. DFW is a brilliant, but like all potent things, everything in moderation.

E' la mia seconda lettura di "Considera l'aragosta" e ancora una volta sono colpita, gratificata e quasi commossa dalla incredibile intelligenza di Wallace, dalla sua capacità e acutezza nel trattare qualsiasi argomento, dal più serio al più faceto, le elezioni politiche americane, la narrativa di Kafka e Dostoevskij, o la sagra dell'aragosta, sempre cogliendone con profondità e onestà intellettuale gli aspetti più universali ed umani, dal suo rivolgersi al lettore creando una corrente di empatia al punto che, come dice il giovane Holden, "vorremmo che fosse nostro amico e poterlo chiamare al telefono quando ci gira...".
La sua prosa è chiara, sincera, talora ironica ma mai supponente, l'autore si pone senza pregiudizi e con rispetto di fronte alla sua materia, qualunque essa sia, e si ha sempre l'impressione che il cuore del suo percorso argomentativo, il suo andare in profondità alle cose, abbiano a che fare con la ricerca della verità e della distinzione tra bene e male.
Anche nel saggio di linguistica, forse il più complesso del libro, traspaiono una capacità di analisi così raffinata e al contempo un'umanità così autentica (e l'una impossibile senza l'altra), che il testo risulta interessante, accattivante e piacevole.
Sei, sette stelline, se potessi.

Damn, David Foster Wallace can write. Perhaps no more than any other writer of the past 25 years, he has such a strong technical mastery of the English language. All of his thoughts are organized with a clarity that George Orwell would admire. And he writes about giant lobster cookers and porno. Neat!

highly entertaining. more restrained in terms of "facts" than the previous collection of essays but also more experimental in form. contains some earlier works (Big Red Son) which were hidden for some silly puritanical reason.

Hablemos de langostas o de cuál es el punto de ebullición correcto

DFW, en su colección de ensayos Hablemos de langostas (Consider the Lobster) se consolida como un observador astuto y minucioso de la sociedad contemporánea. A través de su característico estilo literario -denso, expansivo, repleto de digresiones y notas al pie que abren nuevas líneas de pensamiento- DFW aborda temas aparentemente dispares como la industria de la pornografía, la ética del consumo alimentario y las grandes figuras de la literatura rusa. Sin embargo, el denominador común de estos ensayos es su enfoque filosófico y su capacidad para explorar las complejidades morales y culturales del mundo moderno, con una aguda mezcla de humor e inteligencia.

Esta crítica profundizará en tres ensayos clave de la colección: Big Red Son, Consider the Lobster y Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky, en los que DFW pone en juego su capacidad única para equilibrar la observación minuciosa con reflexiones filosóficas más amplias.

Big Red Son
En Big Red Son, DFW ofrece una mirada mordaz y cómica sobre la industria de la pornografía en Estados Unidos. Enviado por la revista Premiere para cubrir los premios AVN (Adult Video News), el equivalente a los Óscar de la pornografía, DFW se sumerge en un mundo al que aborda con la mezcla perfecta de fascinación antropológica y distanciamiento crítico. A lo largo del ensayo, describe el evento y sus personajes (actores, productores y críticos) con un ojo clínico para los detalles absurdos, lo que refuerza el choque entre la normalización cultural de la pornografía y la naturaleza extremadamente performativa y superficial de la industria.

La crítica en Big Red Son no se limita a las personas o las dinámicas del evento, sino que apunta hacia la industria pornográfica en su totalidad, planteando preguntas sobre el impacto de la pornografía en la cultura de masas, la desensibilización del público ante el sexo y la explotación de las estrellas. Sin embargo, DFW evita caer en una condena moral directa. A través de su uso de la ironía, pone de manifiesto como esta industria ha crecido al margen del reconocimiento cultural "serio", aunque cada vez penetra más profundamente en la vida cotidiana.

El ensayo se destaca por su capacidad para explorar este tema desde un lugar genuinamente analítico, observando la contradicción entre el poder económico de la pornografía y su naturaleza marginalizada socialmente. Al final, DFW deja al lector en un incómodo espacio donde la risa y la incomodidad se mezclan, obligándonos a reflexionar sobre nuestras propias complicidades con la industria del entretenimiento.

Consider the Lobster
El ensayo que da título a la colección es uno de los más profundos en cuanto a reflexiones morales. DFW asiste al Festival de la Langosta de Maine y usa este evento aparentemente banal como punto de partida para cuestionar nuestra relación con el sufrimiento animal y la ética del consumo. Lo que comienza como una típica crónica cultural de un evento local rápidamente se convierte en una exploración de la naturaleza del dolor, la conciencia y la responsabilidad humana.

DFW plantea una serie de preguntas filosóficas inquietantes: ¿Es moralmente aceptable hervir vivas a las langostas simplemente para disfrutar de una comida? ¿Qué dice esto sobre nuestra capacidad para ignorar el sufrimiento de otras criaturas? Estas preguntas son tratadas no desde una postura de superioridad moral, sino desde una incertidumbre sincera. DFW no ofrece respuestas claras, sino que invita a los lectores a confrontar sus propios valores y su relación con la comida de una manera más consciente.

El ensayo también es un ejemplo excelente del estilo de DFW, lleno de notas al pie que expanden y profundizan la discusión. A través de su estilo discursivo, el texto refleja las complejidades de este tema ético, al tiempo que deja entrever la propia lucha interna del autor con respecto al dilema moral que plantea.

Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky
En este ensayo, DFW analiza la monumental biografía de Fiódor Dostoyevski escrita por Joseph Frank, utilizando este análisis como una oportunidad para reflexionar sobre la obra del gran novelista ruso y su influencia en la literatura y el pensamiento occidental. Aquí, DFW muestra su lado más académico, pero lo hace sin perder su agudeza crítica y su capacidad para conectar temas literarios profundos con cuestiones existenciales más amplias.

DFW elogia a Frank por haber creado una obra que no solo es una biografía tradicional, sino que también capta la tensión entre la vida y la obra de Dostoyevski, uno de los escritores más complejos y filosóficamente cargados de la historia. A través de este análisis, DFW reflexiona sobre el lugar de la fe, la moralidad y el sufrimiento en la obra de Dostoyevski, temas que resuenan con muchas de sus propias preocupaciones literarias.

Este ensayo también es un ejemplo de cómo DFW, incluso cuando trata temas eruditos, mantiene un tono accesible y dinámico. Al discutir las obras de Dostoyevski, logra contextualizarlas dentro del panorama cultural contemporáneo, haciendo que la figura del autor ruso se sienta no solo relevante, sino esencial para entender los dilemas morales modernos.