David
Foster Wallace
At times
profane, often profound, and always entertaining, Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace is a veritable grab
bag of essays. With pieces that range from a refreshingly personal account of 9/11
to a lengthy dictionary review to a diatribe on why sports biographies are so
bad when they could be so good, to say there is something here for everyone
would be an understatement.
Having
already read and loved Wallace’s New
Yorker short story “All That,” my expectations were high, and this brilliantly
crazy collection did not disappoint. Wallace’s voice is persuasive yet honest,
he resents “academese” yet blatantly flaunts his proclivity for large words,
and he includes essays about both the porn industry and the McCain2000 campaign
in the same book. The man is a walking paradox. And that is what makes his
writing, and this collection, so much fun.
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