Consider The Lobster Analysis

One of the most controversial writers of the last two decades is American author David Foster Wallace. Critically acclaimed, DFW is well received amongst critics, who commend his meticulous writing style, and his vast and usually alien vocabulary. One such books which received numerous critical plaudits was Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays, published in 2005. According to author David Lipsky:

“If I had to give an alien one book about American life, I'd hand over Consider the Lobster.”

DFW is not your archetypal hippie writer; he has a flair for the odd, a passion to explore the unspoken, and acute observational skills. His unpredictability is sampled in his book, with the first essay, Big Red Son, which is an informal disquisition on

the porn industry, and his descriptions of the events that transpire in the Adult Video News Awards in 1998. If writing about porn isn’t atypical enough, DFW also showcases his disparity from other writers by taking a swing at the much revered American author, John Updike. In his review of Updike’s Toward the End of Time, DFW not only bounds into the ring, but also cheerfully lands a vicious jab on the writer by calling him a GMN (Great Male Narcissist). DFW presents his convictions on topics varying from the 9/11 incident, to the neuroanatomy of lobsters to Franz Kafka’s humor and so on.
After an analysis of the book, one can definitely see the patriotic American in DFW. In his essay The View from Mrs. Thompson’s, he writes about how he watched the horror on television in the quiet town of Bloomington, IL, in a quaint house with a bunch of old ladies. As opposed to a horrific attack in the bustling city of New York, he sees himself from the other side, understanding the pain from distance, cogitating the causes and effects of such an unprecedented disaster. He observes how all the residents erected flags to show their respect and unity at the time of crisis. Yet, he writes negatively about how the town almost subliminally expects every house to have a flag, big or small, to reflect their patriotism, ignorant of the fact that some people can’t afford to buy a flag, or can’t find one (like himself). He concludes the essay with “whatever America the men in those planes hated so much was far more my America, than it was these ladies’” (Wallace 140). This conveys how he feels that America has changed drastically since the “old ladies’” generation to his, and that it has taken some actions in these years that evoked such a radical and hateful action from the terrorists, reflecting his love for the nation.
Writing about Franz Kafka in Some Remarks on Kafka’s Funniness From Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed, the reader is bound to get the impression that DFW is psychologically twisted, considering how he extracts humor from a rather depressing and morbid tale of Kafka’s.

Yet, there is wisdom in DFW’s wacky views. Writing from a professorial perspective, he writes in a style empathetic towards students, skeptical towards the American education system, while being upset about American limitations on humor. He notes how American humor is purely for amusement and relaxation, and that humor has become an escape mechanism in contemporary society and art. He jokes that regular American humor almost only comprises of “Precocious children/ profane grandparents/ cynically insurgent coworkers” (Wallace 63). What he wishes to convey is that students don't see humor as a way to engage with and challenge society or oneself, but as an escape from the knowledge that comes with becoming an adult. Since Kafka’s funniness is a conglomeration of both comedy and inevitable tragedy, he finds it harder to teach, as students are conditioned to view comedy as a getaway from seriousness when tragedy is entangled with it, students can’t find a way to maintain the equilibrium required to fully grasp what Kafka tries to convey. He believes that the American education system wants students to strive to want to be something, that they put in a whole lot of effort to get there, only to realize that

the process of getting there, the efforts they’ve taken, have molded them into what they are, which turns out to be not what they strived for. He implicitly informs readers that Kafka's humor is woven and based in the tragic humor only real life can offer, and that maybe Kafka’s humor is too real. In sum, he conveys that Kafka presents life's tragic irony as comedy, and students don't want to recognize this type of humor.
DFW also writes intensely personal, reflective, and journalistic reports on the premier lobster festival in Maine in his title essay. In both Consider the Lobster and Big Red Son, DFW examines how today’s entertainment ethic is abrasive to an integral, and even sacred, part of the human experience. He does so with distinction and complex insight. He doesn’t force his views upon the reader, but it’s impossible to read these two essays without mourning the harm inflicted on sexuality and animal rights by the belief that nothing is intrinsically important, that nothing is sacred, and that everything is fair game for measurement according to the market-driven calculations of the entertainment industry.
DFW is also nothing but blunt and straightforward.

He displays his uncompromisingly forthright side in his essays Certainly the End of Something or Other, and How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart. He daringly challenges the much revered American author John Updike. DFW, though a fan of Updike, despises Updike’s Toward the End of Time as he is annoyed by the indifference in Updike’s works. DFW feels that Updike’s similar protagonists all reflect Updike’s own personal flaws and convictions. DFW also notes his disappointment in the climax, as Updike forces the reader to believe that the prostate operation which renders the narrator impotent is a tragedy, which DFW clearly disagrees with. In sum, DFW feels that Updike shoves his thoughts into the readers’ minds, and doesn’t give room for further contemplation, and also that Updike is personally incapable of accepting disagreement/ any variation in opinion other than his. Writing about tennis star Tracy Austin’s biography, he offers a scathing review of her autobiography, extending into a general critique of the mass-produced ghostwritten sports autobiographies flooding the market. This reflects DFW’s fearlessness when it comes to broadcasting his uncommon and rather tenacious feelings on otherwise admired

works.
His books have received mostly positive reviews. According to The Guardian:
“Is he a philosopher or a novelist? An essayist or a teller of tall tales? What none of the above even hints at is that, first and last, Wallace is also a sublimely funny writer, both ha-ha and peculiar. Consider the Lobster offers an exhilarating short-cut to the mind of a writer for whom autocastration is a good reason to investigate 'adult entertainment', who swears once a year not to get angry and self-righteous about the misuse of the possessive apostrophe, or the serial comma, and who is happy to devote 3,000 words to Kafka's 'sense of humor'. This new collection demonstrates a contemporary American master working at the extreme edge of the radar, asking question after question about the mad, mad world in which he finds himself.”
There’s also the odd negative review, like San Francisco Gate:
“It's a typical Wallace performance, at once highly entertaining and highly unsatisfying. He's like an overly enthusiastic high school teacher trying to wow his kids with the idea that literature (or whatever else he's obsessed with) can be fun.”
On his critique of the universally acclaimed author Joseph Frank’s biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky, SFGate critiques him, saying:
“After all, it's not enough just to be clever when the seriousness of Serious Literature is at stake. Don't you also have to hold yourself accountable to your own observations? Apparently not, unless Wallace really thinks the urgently important question is not one of the Important Questions but, in fact, why we're not asking the Important Questions. Which, let's face it, sounds like a secondary question at best.”
To summarize, in this book, DFW presents himself as a patriotic American, who isn’t afraid to voice his most disagreeable convictions, but yet has a spiritual and intellectual approach to seemingly irrelevant events. The essays of DFW amalgamate to create a travelogue of American checkpoints of communal, societal, and sacred destruction. While much of DFW’s non-fiction identifies the problem points of a nation ailing from rapid cultural and spiritual deterioration, DFW’s obsession with prioritizing observation serves his higher purpose of identifying the best vantage point to view the world.
DFW believes that when one opens a book, one opens a relationship with its creator, and he has achieved just that with this book. One realizes DFW’s ingenuity in this respect, with him taking over the charge as guy with the red cape, and us readers, bulls. The deal is simply for the reader to keep reading; the payoff, is the performance. In conclusion, DFW doesn't demand we trust and preach his facts; he doesn't even demand we stop eating lobster. He asks of us something more intricate -- that we cogitate about and review our actions.