On Consider the Lobster

This is my first time reading Wallace, may he rest in peace, and I’m impressed. The essays are jaw-dropping. He has a conversational, warm tone that’s hard to place politically, and the defining tension across the collection is between cynicism and authenticity. That tension is why the best pieces here are his reflections on 9/11, the long essay on the John McCain campaign, and the closing review of a Dostoevsky biography — the tennis essay belongs to that group too, if to a lesser degree.

The difficulty of pinning him down is, I think, the point: he doesn’t want to be defined by political affiliation or school of thought or anything of the kind. The aim is to push through his own cynical, jaded worldview toward something more profound. A number of the essays sit outside that frame, though — the one on the politics of the English language and the title piece, “Consider the Lobster,” both work to make us think harder about our own assumptions and philosophical foundations. I don’t quite know what to make of the essay on pornography, but I laughed the whole way through it: a case of completely unhinged gonzo journalism.

I’ll definitely read more of him. The threads he pulls resonate with me strongly — though my own prose would probably flunk his classes — and there’s a depth of self-reflection and sincerity in him that I wish I came across more often.