The Hilarious and Exasperating Mr. Wallace
I first read the essay "Consider the Lobster" in Gourmet magazine, of all places! That Gourmet would publish David Foster Wallace signals the periodical's new lively and risky editorial stance, and its publication resulted in the magazines greatest number of letters to the editor as from any other article they have published. Having read the essay, I couldn't wait to read the collection.
Wallace, known more for his novels ("Infinite Jest") and experimental fiction ("Oblivion"), in his essays employs the same devices that are used (some say over-used) in his fiction - lengthy and convoluted footnotes, footnotes within footnotes. But in the essay form, the style seems to make more sense to me. In his fiction this kind of thing makes me imagine a smart wiseguy lurking behind the author's voice, telling me how smart he is. "Consider the Lobster" starts out as a high-spirited slice-of-Americana travelogue to the Maine Lobster festival and devolves into a meditation on the sentience of the American lobster, ruminations on PETA, whether or not lobsters feel pain, and so on. This is exactly the kind of thing that can get traditional Gourmet readers up in arms!
The other pieces in the collection take a look at the adult film business, American language usage, right-wing talk radio hosts, 9/11/2002, the campaign trail with Sen. John Mc Cain and reviews of Dostoyevsky, Updike and Kafka (whom is admired for "his humor").
In debt to Mark Twain, but also influenced by Pynchon, Tom Wolfe and Flannery O'Connor, David Foster Wallace is an American fictional voice to be reckoned with - brilliant, acerbic, hilarious and thought-provoking.
