Consider the lobster, and other essays

Essays and criticism

First published: 2005
Print length: 343 pagesLittle, Brown, 2005

Description

David Foster Wallace approaches public events and cultural arguments as occasions for sustained moral and linguistic scrutiny. Moving among presidential politics, dictionary disputes, literary reputations, an adult-film convention, and a vast lobster-cooking festival, these essays combine reportage, criticism, comedy, digression, and elaborate footnotes. Wallace asks whether lobsters experience pain, considers why Kafka’s humor can be difficult to recognize, and examines what John Updike represents within American literary culture. Throughout, apparently narrow assignments expand into questions about cruelty, authority, taste, entertainment, and the compromises involved in addressing an audience. The collection offers an exacting encounter with a mind repeatedly testing its own assumptions while trying to describe the systems surrounding it.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Conversational · Dense · Essayistic · Witty

Pace

Variable

Tone

Cerebral · Humorous · Irreverent · Reflective

Structure

Anthology

Focus

Argument · Ideas · Voice

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 5 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 3 / 5

Themes

Art and creativityKnowledge and truthMoralityPolitics and ideologyPower

About David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace was an American novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and professor, best known for Infinite Jest. His work moves between dense, formally experimental fiction and nonfiction that can sound conversational even as it develops intricate arguments. Long, branching sentences, specialized or invented language, shifting voices, and disruptive footnotes are central to his method; he described the notes as a way to interrupt linear narrative while preserving readability and reflecting the texture of experience. Across fiction and essays, Wallace examined entertainment, appetite, self-consciousness, and the habits of irony in a media-saturated culture, returning to the difficulty of sincere communication and the fear of being alone. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster turn cruises, fairs, politics, usage disputes, and public spectacles into comic, morally alert scrutiny. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men uses omissions, fragments, and compromised speakers to probe sexual power and self-deception. What distinguishes Wallace is the pressure he puts on form itself, making digression and excess serve sustained attention to other minds.