David Foster Wallace, A Writer I Cannot Decide Upon , and Milan Kundera

 Let's start with a caveat, my reading of David Foster Wallace came in prison and was limited to Infinite Jest and Consider The Lobster. The former I have written about as being the victim of timing; a friend of my died of cirrhosis about the same time as I read of a similar death in Wallace's novel. I recall also finding his characters cold, dull. The actual prose is great. That may explain why I found his non-friction more enjoyable.

It seems I am not alone in finding Wallace's non-fiction attractive.

David Foster Wallace's technique in "Consider the Lobster" 

 By beginning his article in the way that any typical culinary-magazine-reader would expect, he allows the reader to make an investment of time and emotion in the essay so that when he turns the tables and betrays the reader's expectations, he/she will be more likely to keep reading. In this way, he tricks the reader into "eating his/her philosophical vegetables" by presenting what looks like an easy read but is actually an ethical analysis. This is a very clever technique, but this essay is the first in which I have ever seen it used.

Why “Consider the Lobster” by David Foster Wallace Is My Favourite Essay

In his words: “Why is a primitive, inarticulate form of suffering less urgent or uncomfortable for the person who’s helping to inflict it by paying for the food it results in? I’m not trying to give you a PETA-like screed here—at least I don’t think so. I’m trying, rather, to work out and articulate some of the troubling questions that arise amid all the laughter and saltation and community pride of the Maine Lobster Festival. The truth is that if you, the Festival attendee, permit yourself to think that lobsters can suffer and would rather not, the MLF can begin to take on aspects of something like a Roman circus or medieval torture-fest.” 

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These are good questions, not just about lobster, but about all of the non-human animals that humans eat and use. And they’re not hypothetical philosophical reflections. The question of how the extent to which humans’ gustatory pleasure should take precedence over the vast animal suffering that produces it has real material consequences for non-human animals every second of every day.

The article is rhetorically brilliant in its bait-and-switch approach, incredibly well-written, philosophically compelling, and honest in its level of self-reflection and critical reflection on barbaric yet widely accepted food practices.

And that’s why it’s my favourite essay about eating animals. 

Why’s This So Good? David Foster Wallace and the brilliant “Consider the Lobster” 

There’s nevertheless a useful correlation between the frog parable and thinking about the structure of Wallace’s career-long engagement within the literary journalistic tradition: He begins slowly, almost tepidly, with his readers, gracefully careening them through a seemingly innocuous narrative about “one of the best food-themed festivals in the world.” Meanwhile, unbeknownst to gourmands and frogs alike, the narrative’s temperature steadily increases to a boil, and readers are unable to think or claw their way out of questioning the varying gradations of consciousness and the responsibilities and subsequent difficulties of living a thoughtful, conscientious existence....

 But I just cannot find the same humor, the smart-assery, in his fiction.

YouTube has this video of readings from Wallace's works. Listening it to this morning, I still cannot find anything to change my opinion of Wallace's fiction - a brilliant stylist whose stories lack any humor, which does not do justice to his ideas. 

 

Against Wallace, let me suggest Milan Kundera. Where Wallace and Kundera cross is as writers with a philosophical bent. I am left wondering if Kundera, coming from Communist Czechoslovakia made him a better novelist and philosopher than Wallace.

 

 

 

sch 8/26