It reminds me of early Simpson's episodes. The juxtapositions of pointless and detailed erudition, obvious humor and subtle satire, and breaking the fourth-wall moral mirror. It's equal parts brilliant, snarky and trivial.
I generally find DFW unbearably pretentious, but there is something sublime about an article like this getting published, with all of those footnotes, in a food magazine. Something about it reminds me of the performance art of Andy Kaufman.
It's strange to me that I've heard of this essay probably hundreds of times yet this was the first time I actually read it.
Pretentious means to pretend to be someone/something one is not. DFW was definitely as brilliant as he "appeared to be".
I won't get into details because it is very personal, but DFW did something staggeringly generous and selfless and thoughtful for a close friend of mine -- a friend who was also a complete stranger to DFW at the time.
The pat "DWF/pretentious" critique which is heard from time to time seems to be to be pretty ignorant of what he wrote, why he wrote, and who he was. And that little insight I got of him gave me a deeper appreciation for what he published.
I am not trying to speak ill of the dead. I am expressing my opinion on their work. The work of an artist is not immune to criticism because they were a nice person.
I read Ian M. Banks for the first time recently. About halfway through "Player of Games" I realized what an enormous talent that man has for writing. It snuck up on me, it took me by surprise. I think of the Italian word Sprezzatura and the Wikipedia summary: "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it". In my estimation Banks does this, he artfully conceals just how good he is at what he is doing.
In contrast, when I read DFW I feel as if he is poking his talent into my face over and over again. Even in this essay, I feel an overbearing sense of how good it is. The DFW writing I am familiar with lacks the ease I appreciate.
I prefer when artists downplay their ability and express it subtly. That doesn't mean that an artist must do this to be good writer or a good person. Some artists will stretch themselves to the very limit of their abilities in an attempt to express themselves in a way they find satisfying or meaningful. And if I find that tedious or unbearable to read then that doesn't necessarily make me ignorant.
Well, the writing is awful -as expected from a professional writer with
mainstream awards etc that are routinely handed out to people who just. can't.
write. But do it anyway. At length. Great length. On and on.
I mean the entire article could be reduced to one page, were it to be stripped
of all the unberable snobbery and laughably superficial invocation of
"scientific facts". As a piece of philosophical writing, it's complete shit. It
puts forth its author's beliefs, straw-mans all the possible objections that the
author has thought of and makes no effort to think of any ones the author
doesn't have a good answer for. It makes it very obvious that the author thinks
that he is one of the very few, chosen people, intellectually gifted enough to
ponder these difficult, oh, difficult, questions so deeply. It makes it plain
that everyone else is an idiot who doesn't know shit. The article preaches and
moralises, and grandstands and my god, the voice, the smugness, the
know-it-all-ness, the manic-depressive irony, the self-serving banality, is like
listening to Ferris Buehler telling himself off for masturbating to his dad's
porn.
And you know what? It's fucking wrong to kill lobsters (and crabs) by boiling
them alive. If there's any other way to do it, then there's a better way to do
it. That is my deeply held belief. But by reading this article by someone so
obviously so up themselves they see the light from the other side, for a moment
I doubted my belief and started thinking that I may be wrong in my convictions.
Not because the article gave me any new perspective on the subject. But because
it made me think: "this idiot agrees with me. Why?".
Not to veer too far off topic but had to take the chance to share Hunter Thompson’s piece he wrote the week after 9/11, which similarly, I’m surprised was published: https://www.espn.com/espn/page2/story?id=1250751
One small step for humankind, but a giant one for lobsters occurred a few days ago when the UK government officially recognized them (together with octopus and crabs) as sentient beings:
If you do not read the whole original article, read just this excerpt.
"If you’re tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container’s sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof. And worse is when the lobster’s fully immersed. Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off. Or the creature’s claws scraping the sides of the kettle as it thrashes around. The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water (with the obvious exception of screaming)."
> the UK government officially recognized them as sentient beings
And the real consequences of that joke are?...
Will Mr Johnson reprove the thousands of governments that use seafood to feed their population and avoid famine, suffering and death of millions of people?
Do you put think that putting acid into the wounds of a sentient organism is cruel? Then we must jail anybody using vinegar in their lattice also. Plants are sentient organisms!.
How does it feel if we take the previous attempt of emotional manipulation and substitute that for this?
"If you’re tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the cabbage will sometimes jump trying to escape its destine or even to hook its leaves over the kettle’s rim like a children trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof with a fluffy kitten in their broken right arm. And worse is when the cabbage is fully immersed. As a Guantanamo prisoner cabbages aren't aquatic plants and can't breath under the water!. Even if you cover the kettle and turn away to not smell its fear, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the dismembered cabbage dies slowly with a sad why? why?. The brassicacea, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were a cabbage disfigured after a thousand years of culture and plunged into boiling water after being chopped in a thousand parts (with the obvious exception of not screaming)."
You are hurting the feelings of all the cabbages and cabbage patch kids in the planet now.
And lobsters are not killed clinging from dishes like that fake relate claims, (but don't allow the truth to stand in the way of a good crowfunding).
Plants are much more sophisticated organisms that most people think. What if we just don't understand their suffering when we put a photosynthetic organism in the dark for months? Plant lives matter! please send me money (or seeds).
I assume that by law octopus in UK must be killed in a fair duel now, because we didn't had enough problems with wet markets yet.
I loved the writing in this essay but disagree with the conclusion. Let's just say that I doubt that individually wrapped grocery store meats are apex civilization, and no human civilization every thrived without exploiting[1] animals. The exploitation has always been performed across the spectrum of cruelty[2], but the fact of it is incontrovertible. So the essential flaw in the logic, I think, is that, very unusual for DFW, he missed the more important widest context.
My favorite DFW essay (out of oh so many) is "Tense Present"[3]. I bought the Garner because of it. I've read it more than twice, and I very rarely read things more than once. I recommended it to a friend and she came back and said, "That's why you are the way you are, you're a snoot!". I laughed.
[1][4] "exploiting" chosen to make the meaning explicit.
[2] I try hard to minimize the cruelty in my practice; profit based exploitation
rarely does. Neither does a pack of African wild dogs, nor the tarantula hawk
dragging the much bigger tarantula across my yard.
I don't totally understand your position...if the cruelty of wolves / nature justifies your consumption, than why give a shit about the treatment of your food source at all?
If you're trying to minimize cruelty, you wouldn't eat them at all.
It's crazy that he wrote this for a food magazine. I think when they sent him on this assignment that this was not at all what they were expecting to get back.
The morality of meat consumption is something I've struggled with in the past as well. If I'm being completely honest the reason I've never stopped is simply convenience in both macro and micro nutrient availability. This has completely put me off lobster though, won't lie.
Other fat sources are healthier, and other protein sources are less perishable/risky. It is annoying to abstain meat in most restaurants, but this is rapidly improving. My own sweet spot compromise is ovo-lacto-pescatarianism. I eat lots of nuts, and supplement protein when I work out. Sugar being poisonous, I mostly substitute fats for calories. Works for me anyhow, once I got used to it. Maybe insects will be a thing some day
Vegetables and fruit rank next to poultry on the top of the food pathogen list. Raw flour can and does carry Salmonella. Food pathogenicity is where you think it will be and often where you don't think about it at all.
My hope is cloned meat! Wouldn't mind paying a little extra for it. And you are absolutely right, having a meatless diet is getting progressively easier.
If you get a chance, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again is really terrific too. I love Infinite Jest, but I think I love DFW’s essays even more. They are just the right length.
The David Foster Wallace Reader has these and more including the brilliant “Both Flesh and Not” and some trivia like his course syllabi and correspondence.
I found A Supposedly Fun Thing to be rather grating and self-congratulatory. In contrast, the essays in Consider the Lobster showed a better balance between restraint and indulgence.
Is this an attempt at satire? I mean, the lobster actually reacts to imminent death whereas you've chosen to personify inanimate and already dead lettuce. Do you believe they are the same? I am baffled.
It reminds me of early Simpson's episodes. The juxtapositions of pointless and detailed erudition, obvious humor and subtle satire, and breaking the fourth-wall moral mirror. It's equal parts brilliant, snarky and trivial.
I generally find DFW unbearably pretentious, but there is something sublime about an article like this getting published, with all of those footnotes, in a food magazine. Something about it reminds me of the performance art of Andy Kaufman.
It's strange to me that I've heard of this essay probably hundreds of times yet this was the first time I actually read it.
I won't get into details because it is very personal, but DFW did something staggeringly generous and selfless and thoughtful for a close friend of mine -- a friend who was also a complete stranger to DFW at the time.
The pat "DWF/pretentious" critique which is heard from time to time seems to be to be pretty ignorant of what he wrote, why he wrote, and who he was. And that little insight I got of him gave me a deeper appreciation for what he published.
I read Ian M. Banks for the first time recently. About halfway through "Player of Games" I realized what an enormous talent that man has for writing. It snuck up on me, it took me by surprise. I think of the Italian word Sprezzatura and the Wikipedia summary: "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it". In my estimation Banks does this, he artfully conceals just how good he is at what he is doing.
In contrast, when I read DFW I feel as if he is poking his talent into my face over and over again. Even in this essay, I feel an overbearing sense of how good it is. The DFW writing I am familiar with lacks the ease I appreciate.
I prefer when artists downplay their ability and express it subtly. That doesn't mean that an artist must do this to be good writer or a good person. Some artists will stretch themselves to the very limit of their abilities in an attempt to express themselves in a way they find satisfying or meaningful. And if I find that tedious or unbearable to read then that doesn't necessarily make me ignorant.
I mean the entire article could be reduced to one page, were it to be stripped of all the unberable snobbery and laughably superficial invocation of "scientific facts". As a piece of philosophical writing, it's complete shit. It puts forth its author's beliefs, straw-mans all the possible objections that the author has thought of and makes no effort to think of any ones the author doesn't have a good answer for. It makes it very obvious that the author thinks that he is one of the very few, chosen people, intellectually gifted enough to ponder these difficult, oh, difficult, questions so deeply. It makes it plain that everyone else is an idiot who doesn't know shit. The article preaches and moralises, and grandstands and my god, the voice, the smugness, the know-it-all-ness, the manic-depressive irony, the self-serving banality, is like listening to Ferris Buehler telling himself off for masturbating to his dad's porn.
And you know what? It's fucking wrong to kill lobsters (and crabs) by boiling them alive. If there's any other way to do it, then there's a better way to do it. That is my deeply held belief. But by reading this article by someone so obviously so up themselves they see the light from the other side, for a moment I doubted my belief and started thinking that I may be wrong in my convictions. Not because the article gave me any new perspective on the subject. But because it made me think: "this idiot agrees with me. Why?".
Consider the Lobster (2004) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8407616 - Oct 2014 (48 comments)
David Foster Wallace, "Consider the Lobster." Aug 2004 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1562677 - July 2010 (1 comment)
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lobsters-octopus-and-crab...
If you do not read the whole original article, read just this excerpt.
"If you’re tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container’s sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof. And worse is when the lobster’s fully immersed. Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off. Or the creature’s claws scraping the sides of the kettle as it thrashes around. The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water (with the obvious exception of screaming)."
Switzerland banned boiled them alive a few years ago https://kottke.org/18/02/switzerland-makes-it-illegal-to-boi...
And the real consequences of that joke are?...
Will Mr Johnson reprove the thousands of governments that use seafood to feed their population and avoid famine, suffering and death of millions of people?
How does it feel if we take the previous attempt of emotional manipulation and substitute that for this?
"If you’re tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the cabbage will sometimes jump trying to escape its destine or even to hook its leaves over the kettle’s rim like a children trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof with a fluffy kitten in their broken right arm. And worse is when the cabbage is fully immersed. As a Guantanamo prisoner cabbages aren't aquatic plants and can't breath under the water!. Even if you cover the kettle and turn away to not smell its fear, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the dismembered cabbage dies slowly with a sad why? why?. The brassicacea, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were a cabbage disfigured after a thousand years of culture and plunged into boiling water after being chopped in a thousand parts (with the obvious exception of not screaming)."
And lobsters are not killed clinging from dishes like that fake relate claims, (but don't allow the truth to stand in the way of a good crowfunding).
Plants are much more sophisticated organisms that most people think. What if we just don't understand their suffering when we put a photosynthetic organism in the dark for months? Plant lives matter! please send me money (or seeds).
I assume that by law octopus in UK must be killed in a fair duel now, because we didn't had enough problems with wet markets yet.
My favorite DFW essay (out of oh so many) is "Tense Present"[3]. I bought the Garner because of it. I've read it more than twice, and I very rarely read things more than once. I recommended it to a friend and she came back and said, "That's why you are the way you are, you're a snoot!". I laughed.
[1][4] "exploiting" chosen to make the meaning explicit.
[2] I try hard to minimize the cruelty in my practice; profit based exploitation rarely does. Neither does a pack of African wild dogs, nor the tarantula hawk dragging the much bigger tarantula across my yard.
[3] Possibly unreadable font, might be others out there: https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-...
[4] DFW correctly (yah, that's redundant) used 1 based footnote numbering.
Thanks for the recommendation. I laughed out loud at this line:
> He's both a lawyer and a lexicographer (which seems a bit like being both a narcotics dealer and a DEA agent).
If you're trying to minimize cruelty, you wouldn't eat them at all.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211206162647if_/http://www.col...