Consider the Lobster is a compilation of previously published, exceedingly well-crafted essays that begin on page one with a detailed visit to the annual AVN awards, the nation's premiere ceremony for pornographers. Wallace introduces us to actors (men with one significant talent) and a few augmented actresses, who in the 1990s when the VCR was transferring the industry from sticky movie parlors to home bedrooms, were being paid to accept increasing levels of degradation. Mostly we meet directors and producers who are just plain icky. The awards ceremony itself is laughable in its specificity and self-promotion. But mostly it is Wallace's dry-witted, head-scratching wonder at the magnitude of an industry that even twenty years after the essay was written still make it worth reading.
Turn the pages and there is a short piece on the hidden humor in Kafka (and the cluelessness of college students that need to have jokes explained to them), a passionate report on the war among American grammarians (who knew?), and a devastating take-down of Tracy Austin's sports autobiography. The title story about lobsters may have convinced me to become a vegetarian, even though Foster Wallace is not one, it is that well written.
Consider the Lobster is probably the perfect book for a nightstand where it can be picked up and read in small portions between larger books.
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