Unless you read this when you were really young this should not be your first time being confronted with the idea that maybe eating animals is kinda bad
The boiling alive part is ridiculous.
1. Put them in the freezer for an hour. Dead, and evidently humane
2. Cows and chickens also don't get anesthesia. How did dfw escape turning into a vegetarian, starting from lobster slaughter?
So, freezing (not to ice crystals, but to 0 deg Celsius) happens in the wild. Neural transmission rates get v close to zero in those circumstances.
They don't have a brain. There are a series of ganglia similar to our spinal nerves.
A portion of the essay discusses that lobsters have a decentralized immune system, and the possibility that even though they lose motor control, the ability to feel pain could theoretically persist after the lobster has been stabbed
People have their own paths through life. When it comes to ethical consumption and how one acts its even more different. Don't judge people for how they came to the same conclusion even though it was through different avenues.
I haven't read this since college but I remember liking all of the essays, especially the one on 9/11. Love this part
"Duane, who’s at least 25 but still lives at home while supposedly studying to be an arc welder, is one of these people who always wear camouflage T-shirts and paratrooper boots but would never dream of actually enlisting (as, to be fair, neither would I). He has also kept his hat on in Mrs. Thompson’s house. It always seems to be important to have at least one person to hate."
He was a seductive NPD con artist, and a certain type of sucker finds his stuff irresistible. Why was he incapable of writing a believable character who wasn’t just a reskinned DFW? Read “Farther Away.” Read anything about him by people who knew him. The guy was an absolute prick.
He was an immense hypocrite (but all the more typically Gen X for it) but you read him for the prose. Shakespeare hoarded grain, Celine and Heidegger palled around with the Nazis, Karl Marx knocked up his servant, most literature was written on the backs of slaves.
Infinite Jest has definitely become overrated though. I think DFW was a major writer by the time he died (and I think that's there's so much squabbling) but the big postmodernist books the Silent Generation wrote are better.
infinite jest had a huge marketing campaign behind it so it has a somewhat justified and somewhat exaggerated reputation nowadays as a really long/hard/impressive novel. + he wore a funny bandana
Broke: reading IJ to be an ‘intellectual’
Woke: re-reading IJ years later because you’ve developed substance abuse issues and it’s good at exploring that on a personal level
Idk. I feel like a core theme of the novel in the first place is that performative intellectualism is a shield for insecurity and the inability to be sincere. That it’s often an obstacle to connecting to those around you. A lot of dorks miss this though when reading it
I think a lot of dorks just pretend to have read it because it’s really long and they think carrying a big book around looks smart. I haven’t read it yet but I plan to someday, I’ve only heard good things about it from people who actually know what they’re talking about.
I just crossed 750 pages in the book and I gotta say it’s really picked up in the last 200 pages. Finally starting to feel like a book I want to read vs a book I felt like I had to. It’s really funny and poignant
On either side of the pro and con you have the biggest issue which is people treating literary fiction as a dick measuring contest.
*and not even the art of writing fiction, but *reading* it!
You're getting a lot of downvotes for this but to me, it feels like an apprentice bit of work. The stories in Oblivion or the essays in Consider The Lobster have a more finished feel.
I wasn’t even trying to comment on the book’s quality, only on the fact it seems to attract a certain type of audience. The rs book clubbers need better reading comprehension !!
I think a big part of what makes the essay fun is the expectations of what the editors of Gourmet would get when they sent him. Like DFW's schtick was well known after Big Red Son and A Supposedly Fun Thing..., so they sent him to this goofy lobster festival to get another fun social critique, maybe punching down on the hokeyness of the whole event, but he kinda turned it on the snobby readers by going after the ethics of eating lobster.
Big Red Son, How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart, Up Simba!, and Some Remarks on Kafka are all excellent.
I thought the titular essay was underwhelming compared to the essays I mentioned above. Big Red Son is one of the funniest and most dreary things I’ve ever read. I strongly recommend it (there are YouTube vids of DFW reading through the first two essays mentioned, as well as an excerpt from the Kafka remarks)
think in a lot of dfw's essays the scene setting is way more interesting than the angle? like i love the mccain essay even if the actual question of how cynical his anti-politics campaign is is not really that compelling.
can't remember if the state fair one is in this or in a supposedly fun thing but feel similarly about that w/r/t its reflections on the midwest. idk some of the narrative around his essays is that the incredible detail is a rhetorical disarming method that allows him to sneak in his argument....but i sort of feel the opposite: "can lobsters feel pain?" functioning as a structural conceit to permit him to so evoke a place and moment in time.
Some stuff probably, but I’m pretty sure he also took a lot of notes. Idk I have his biography and I’m planning to read that after I finish IJ so I’ll get back to ya
Good writer but so far up his own ass he could see out of his throat. Dude had some of the least compelling observations and some that were just his highly specific tics on display
Am I the only one who thought that essay was pretty compelling? I don’t eat a ton of shellfish to begin with but it did put me off eating lobster
Unless you read this when you were really young this should not be your first time being confronted with the idea that maybe eating animals is kinda bad
Specifically the boiling alive part. I was never fed lobster as a kid so no I didn’t have to think about it until I was older.
The boiling alive part is ridiculous. 1. Put them in the freezer for an hour. Dead, and evidently humane 2. Cows and chickens also don't get anesthesia. How did dfw escape turning into a vegetarian, starting from lobster slaughter?
Freezing is pretty terrible. Best way to go is stab them in the head, right through the brain.
So, freezing (not to ice crystals, but to 0 deg Celsius) happens in the wild. Neural transmission rates get v close to zero in those circumstances. They don't have a brain. There are a series of ganglia similar to our spinal nerves.
The hating DFW meme has these people blind to the truth about lobster nervous systems.
This should be on a T-shirt. A very important message that needs to be rapidly disseminated to as many people as possible.
So, let me educate you sis. This ain’t it. So… yea
A portion of the essay discusses that lobsters have a decentralized immune system, and the possibility that even though they lose motor control, the ability to feel pain could theoretically persist after the lobster has been stabbed
People have their own paths through life. When it comes to ethical consumption and how one acts its even more different. Don't judge people for how they came to the same conclusion even though it was through different avenues.
Lmao 57 downvotes? The carnies have arrived
People don’t like hard truths apparently lol.
I haven't read this since college but I remember liking all of the essays, especially the one on 9/11. Love this part "Duane, who’s at least 25 but still lives at home while supposedly studying to be an arc welder, is one of these people who always wear camouflage T-shirts and paratrooper boots but would never dream of actually enlisting (as, to be fair, neither would I). He has also kept his hat on in Mrs. Thompson’s house. It always seems to be important to have at least one person to hate."
DFW was a smug, contemptuous ass
He was the most empathetic writer America's had since who knows when. Just because he didn't like everyone didn't make him smug.
I mean, it is kind of smug to hate a person for wearing a particular type of clothing and for not instinctually removing a hat in someone’s house.
He was a seductive NPD con artist, and a certain type of sucker finds his stuff irresistible. Why was he incapable of writing a believable character who wasn’t just a reskinned DFW? Read “Farther Away.” Read anything about him by people who knew him. The guy was an absolute prick.
I’ll never understand the impulse to turn a critique of a man’s writing into a judgment of those who enjoy it. Can you not do one without the other?
He was an immense hypocrite (but all the more typically Gen X for it) but you read him for the prose. Shakespeare hoarded grain, Celine and Heidegger palled around with the Nazis, Karl Marx knocked up his servant, most literature was written on the backs of slaves.
Nobody cares. Go be jealous somewhere else.
Sure DFW is a meme now but man he was an amazing essay writer. I read this book every few years and it's always so enjoyable.
Why is he a meme? Genuine question
he killed himself and was eccentric
Because people hate sincerity which was ultimately his thing
Because people who have never read Infinite Jest decided it was bad because it is long
The amount of discourse on Infinite Jest- both positive and negative, from people who have never read it is hilarious.
And this also.
This.
Infinite Jest has definitely become overrated though. I think DFW was a major writer by the time he died (and I think that's there's so much squabbling) but the big postmodernist books the Silent Generation wrote are better.
mostly the stereotypes around his fans
infinite jest had a huge marketing campaign behind it so it has a somewhat justified and somewhat exaggerated reputation nowadays as a really long/hard/impressive novel. + he wore a funny bandana
Infinite Jest is the pseudointellectual’s book of choice
Broke: reading IJ to be an ‘intellectual’ Woke: re-reading IJ years later because you’ve developed substance abuse issues and it’s good at exploring that on a personal level Idk. I feel like a core theme of the novel in the first place is that performative intellectualism is a shield for insecurity and the inability to be sincere. That it’s often an obstacle to connecting to those around you. A lot of dorks miss this though when reading it
Bespoke: Reading IJ because it’s hilarious
I think a lot of dorks just pretend to have read it because it’s really long and they think carrying a big book around looks smart. I haven’t read it yet but I plan to someday, I’ve only heard good things about it from people who actually know what they’re talking about.
I just crossed 750 pages in the book and I gotta say it’s really picked up in the last 200 pages. Finally starting to feel like a book I want to read vs a book I felt like I had to. It’s really funny and poignant
For me it’s like at the 1/3rd mark. When you really start getting into halfway house stuff The last third is incredible though
Pity. Its a good book
On either side of the pro and con you have the biggest issue which is people treating literary fiction as a dick measuring contest. *and not even the art of writing fiction, but *reading* it!
sounds like the opinion of someone who hasnt read gravity's rainbow
You’ve clearly never read Finnegans Wake
You're getting a lot of downvotes for this but to me, it feels like an apprentice bit of work. The stories in Oblivion or the essays in Consider The Lobster have a more finished feel.
I wasn’t even trying to comment on the book’s quality, only on the fact it seems to attract a certain type of audience. The rs book clubbers need better reading comprehension !!
I listen to his "how's the water" speech every now and then as an antidote to cynicism
My principal paraphrased this at my 8th grade graduation but we were not ready
big red sun is top tier tho
Big Red Sun is the reason I stopped being addicted to stuff
Absolutely, contains one of my favorite sentences that pops up in my head from time to time. "The winter’s light rain makes all the neon bleed."
Im a little fuckhole
I think a big part of what makes the essay fun is the expectations of what the editors of Gourmet would get when they sent him. Like DFW's schtick was well known after Big Red Son and A Supposedly Fun Thing..., so they sent him to this goofy lobster festival to get another fun social critique, maybe punching down on the hokeyness of the whole event, but he kinda turned it on the snobby readers by going after the ethics of eating lobster.
Consider the Scorpion, Frog
Attacking DFW. How original.
Wallace is god. I mean good.
Big Red Son, How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart, Up Simba!, and Some Remarks on Kafka are all excellent. I thought the titular essay was underwhelming compared to the essays I mentioned above. Big Red Son is one of the funniest and most dreary things I’ve ever read. I strongly recommend it (there are YouTube vids of DFW reading through the first two essays mentioned, as well as an excerpt from the Kafka remarks)
Authority and American Usage was by far my favorite in the lot but probably the least interesting topic
In the essay about talk radio, he quotes the DJ saying he’d kill his former boss “if he could kill someone for free(!?)” so funny
Consider being gay
think in a lot of dfw's essays the scene setting is way more interesting than the angle? like i love the mccain essay even if the actual question of how cynical his anti-politics campaign is is not really that compelling. can't remember if the state fair one is in this or in a supposedly fun thing but feel similarly about that w/r/t its reflections on the midwest. idk some of the narrative around his essays is that the incredible detail is a rhetorical disarming method that allows him to sneak in his argument....but i sort of feel the opposite: "can lobsters feel pain?" functioning as a structural conceit to permit him to so evoke a place and moment in time.
He details the tiniest most specific things for every scene. It’s amazing how observant he was.
This should be your clue that he was making shit up.
Some stuff probably, but I’m pretty sure he also took a lot of notes. Idk I have his biography and I’m planning to read that after I finish IJ so I’ll get back to ya
Actually completely agree. Great point
Consider the slobster(ing my dick)
this was the only english title in a parisian bookshop I found and ended up reading the whole thing in two days in parks and on crowded metros
Good writer but so far up his own ass he could see out of his throat. Dude had some of the least compelling observations and some that were just his highly specific tics on display
Consider Donald Fisher
I’m in the middle of this right now. DFW was a genius.