Consider the Lobster

About the book

The subjects here are a lobster festival in Maine, talk radio, the adult film industry and a consideration of English usage, among others. What holds the pieces together is less a single theme than the pressure of Wallace's attention on each subject.

Wallace writes as a reporter who is also a participant and a worrier. He arrives at a scene, describes it closely, then turns his scrutiny on his own position as an observer. Essays that begin as assignments become arguments about how to think about the thing being described. Footnotes carry a second stream of commentary, sometimes comic, sometimes more precise than the main text.

The title piece shows the method clearly. It starts with a festival and moves toward a question about what it means to eat an animal, without settling into a simple verdict. Readers who know Wallace through his fiction will find the same habits of mind here in a more direct form.

How to read it

Treat the essays as arguments in motion. Wallace builds a case by circling it, adding qualifications and testing his own reactions. The footnotes are part of the argument, so read them as they come.

The sentences are long and often deliberately tangled, and the density varies from piece to piece. Some essays move quickly through observation and anecdote; others slow into close analysis of language or ethics. Read one at a time and let the voice settle before moving on. The comic passages are frequent, but the humor usually carries a serious point.

Who it suits

Readers who enjoy essayists who think on the page, and who are willing to follow a writer through digressions and self-correction, will find a lot here. The book suits people interested in American culture, media and the ethics of ordinary consumption. Readers coming from Wallace's fiction will recognize the voice and the footnotes. Those who prefer a clean, linear argument may find the style tiring.

Reading considerations

The essays were written for magazines and collected later, so the book is a gathering rather than a unified project, and some pieces will interest a given reader more than others. The title essay concerns animal welfare and eating, and the pornography essay deals with adult content; both are handled thoughtfully but directly. The collection was assembled after Wallace's death, so readers should treat it as a posthumous gathering rather than a book he designed as a whole.