Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
First published 2005 · English · 352 pages
- Essays and criticism
A collection of essays and magazine pieces that show Wallace as reporter, critic and curious observer. Subjects include a Maine lobster festival and the ethics of boiling a living creature, the porn industry's awards, a political campaign, the state of American usage and dictionaries, and the writer John Updike. Each piece starts from a concrete event or text and opens into larger questions about honesty, taste, pleasure and responsibility. The writing is funny, digressive and unusually frank about the writer's own doubts, which gives the essays their lasting appeal.
Quotes
There is something inescapably bovine about an American tourist in motion as part of a group. A certain greedy placidity about them. Us, rather. In port we automatically become Peregrinator americanusy Die Lumpenamerikaner. The Ugly Ones.
Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?
I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
The John Ziegler Show is the first local, nonsyndicated late-night program that KFI has aired in a long time. It's something of a gamble for everyone involved. Ten o'clock to one qualifies as late at night in southern California, where hardly anything reputable's open after nine.