This substantial collection of
exceptional essays of various lengths and on diverse subjects stands as a
another round in David Foster Wallace’s protracted war against naiveté,
although it is arguably a battle not overly concerned with foreign policy in as
much as it is often waged on American soil, a least insofar as some of the generalizations
he makes do not always seem to this reader to carry further than the United
states. His fine and frequently amusing essay on the gongs presented to the
various and more or less appealing starlets of the porn industry (an essay to
which I will return), might be cited here as a case in point: it is hard to
imagine – though admittedly this may show the limits of my imagination, or the
limits of my knowledge, or the extent of my naivet̩ Рsuch a scene in another
(in any other?) country. The essay on the inarticulacy of sports heroes
(initially presenting itself as a kind of review of a sports autobiography)
also seemed relatively culture bound insofar as it may well — for all I know —
be true of, say, American football players but his characterization seems not
to apply to many athletes in the only sports arena I am familiar with. There
exists, after all, a notable constellation of Welsh rugby players whose
articulate, perceptive and almost always entertaining commentary on the game
can often be as illuminating as their play. Which suggests that the link
Wallace subtly draws (seems to draw a-priori) between a lack of
self-consciousness and a great sporting ability may not after all be universal.

    It goes without saying (comical
and rhetorical purposes aside, obviously) that the title essay is without doubt
the best essay on the Maine lobster festival that you are ever likely to read.
And other subjects covered by Wallace include Franz Kafka’s under-appreciated
funniness, the contemporary cult of the ratings-chasing talk radio host, the
impact of the horrific events of 9/11 on ordinary American people and the
literature of John Updike. Consider the Lobster also includes an
extended essay on the usage of grammar that has, by virtue of its erudition,
terrified pretty much everyone I know who has read it. That particular essay ("Authority
and American Usage") aside, Consider the Lobster may be read on
both an informative and an entertaining register. Notable, and surely laudable,
is the fact that not many of the essays here are about literature itself but
rather about the business of life; even the essay on grammar, although it is an
essay of words about words, examines word usage with one sane eye on politics.

    I think it worth mentioning
that the essay on the prizes awarded by the Adult Entertainment (that is to
say: Porn) industry to itself was wisely chosen to open this collection as
there is something almost uncanny and certainly fascinating about the attempt
by this "industry" to turn the weirdness of spectator sex into a
mainstream form of entertainment. David Foster Wallace appears to suggest that
porn will only ever asymptotically approach the mainstream because it feeds off
a desire for transgression which by definition excludes it from the
mainstream; but it may possibly be that there is something intrinsic to sex
itself (rather than the structural relationship of pornography to its other)
that prevents it from becoming mainstream entertainment: it may well be that
sexual images hit the unconscious something like a trauma and are therefore not
easily shaken off. (In this notion I have been instructed by some remarks by
Stanley Cavell, who was himself drawing upon the writings of Laplanche.)

    Overall, it may be said that
this collection of essays gathered from various sources is truly funny,
sometimes deeply emotionally sensitive, always spell-bindingly entertaining,
frequently informative and also to an extent revealing of the author; one
couldn’t sanely ask for much else. The collection is also a constant
provocation to think for oneself about the various subjects discussed and exposed;
as some of my remarks above hopefully testify.

© 2006
Matthew Ray

 Matthew
Ray, Bristol, UK

Categories: General