DFW

Consider the Lobster And Other Essays by David Foster Wallace is hilarious, informative, insightful, thoughtful and just all out really awesome. I've always been intrigued by Wallace and he's one of those many authors that I've thought so much about reading, but just hadn't really gotten around to. I did start to read Infinite Jest, found it funny and challenging and for some reason (perhaps due to its massive size or to the fact that I'm just realizing I may have lost it under the bed and just forgot about it) I stopped and haven't returned to it.

I listened to a podcast of him reading a portion of "The View From Mrs. Thompson's", an essay on 9/11 included in Consider the Lobster. Then I listened to another podcast of him on Bookworm. Having my interest piqued even further (and having heard him read at a Downtown for Democracy awhile ago and loving it), I decided to pick up Consider the Lobster. I am really glad I did.

Luckily , I still have a few essays left, and I'm going to cherish them. Although he does have at least one other book of essays and a few other huge, complex novels, so I should get it through my head that I don't really need to ration his words.

"Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think" is a biting, absolutely funny essay on John Updike and his novel Toward the End of Time. It is worth buying the novel just to read the last sentence of this essay.

Other subjects include the porn industry, Kafka's humor, lexicography, lobsters and lobster cookers, sports memoirs, John McCain, talk radio and Dostoevsky. If none of those interest you, I don't know what will.