Consider the Lobster

There they were, still stacked on my table, those partially unread books I mentioned a couple of posts ago, and so I thought I'd try to find places for them on my bookshelves. But -- like a child supposedly cleaning his room -- I quickly got sidetracked. I just had to re-read an essay in one of them, an essay I'd read while traveling, four months ago. On re-reading, I find it stands the test of time. At least the test of four months' time.

I don't read as much fiction as some of you, and so I'd never heard of David Foster Wallace when I bought the little paperback volume of his essays, Consider the Lobster. But Wallace has been considered one of the finest young authors of our time. According to Wikipedia, he was a regionally ranked tennis player as a teenager. He went on to study English and philosophy at Amherst, where he graduated summa cum laude. His philosophy senior thesis was a discussion of modal logic (Richard Taylor's "Fatalism" and the Semantics of Physical Modality), and his English senior thesis became his first published novel (The Broom of the System). Three novels, three collections of short stories, numerous essays. An endowed professorship at Pomona.

Mr. Wallace: A young man of some considerable talent.

But I knew nothing of him. The book I hold in my hand contains a number of essays, all quite amazing for varying reasons. But most memorable -- to me, when I read it earlier -- was the eponymous essay, "Consider the Lobster," originally prepared for and published as an article in Gourmet magazine.

Wallace was asked to tell Gourmet's readers something about the Maine Lobster Festival, which had recently been praised on CNN by an editor of Food & Wine magazine. And so he did. He certainly did. His article began like a typical travel article discussing a typical American event, an event like a county fair. The MLF organizers couldn't have been too pleased, however, as he described in detail the tackiness, the discomfort, the long lines awaiting one at the festival, his description winding up memorably:

Nothing against the euphoric senior editor of Food & Wine, but I'd be surprised if she'd ever actually been here in Harbor Park, amid crowds of people slapping canal-zone mosquitoes as they eat deep-fried Twinkies and watch Professor Paddywhack, on six-foot stilts in a raincoat with plastic lobsters protruding from all directions on springs, terrify their children.

In a footnote, he admits that he probably was not the best person to describe the tourist-packed lobster festival, since he detests tourism in general: "As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing."

As for lobsters, he notes that they are essentially large, sea-going, insect-like creatures dating from the Jurassic -- related to spiders and centipedes (in Maine, they call them "bugs") -- that were considered food for the poor, folks who couldn't afford anything decent to eat, by the early New England settlers.

But these observations were all preparatory. Although the festival was a nightmare, and lobsters somewhat suspect as a food, he acknowledges that he is writing for gourmets who profess their love for the refined and nuanced flavor of the giant crustaceons. Gourmets, by definition, love fine cooking. So, he discusses in exquisite detail how lobsters are cooked. Or more specifically, how they are boiled. Alive.

Wallace admits that he's no vegetarian himself. He acknowledges that he loves meat as much as the next man. But he's uneasy. He's uneasy about the claims that lobsters feel no pain as they are thrust into a pot of boiling water. He discusses in some detail -- with some scientific sophistication -- the neurological system of the lobster. He observes its neurological differences from a human, and its similarities. He observes that arguments could be made either way, neurologically, as to whether and to what extent the lobster senses pain in the same manner as we sense pain. He observes the philosophical impossibility of knowing whether even highly evolved mammals sense pain as we do, in the absence of their ability to speak.

He does note disturbing lobster behaviorial traits, however, for what they're worth:

However stuporous a lobster is from the trip home, for instance, it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water. 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.

I'm just saying, Wallace seems to say.

The lobster seems intelligent enough -- sentient enough -- to be expressing a preference, Wallace notes. A preference -- a preference we might expect, a preference we might express ourselves -- that it not be boiled alive.

And yet, he muses, boiling a lobster really is no more cruel than what we do to cattle, pigs, sheep, all the animals we eat daily, is it? In the final paragraphs of his essay he asks Gourmet's readers, essentially, how do you people live with yourselves? Do you have an ethical system that justifies inflicting this massive amount of suffering on innocent creatures? Or do you just not think about it? And if you just don't think about it, why not?

I'm genuinely curious. After all, isn't being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one's food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet?

The article was paid for by Gourmet, and it was published. Its editors got far more than they bargained for, I'm sure. I can't imagine the reader reaction. But they're probably sophisticated readers; maybe they recognized a great piece of writing.

Four years later, David Foster Wallace hanged himself. He suffered from severe depression, it's been reported.

Now, back to sorting my books. You know, I really do need another bookcase.

Oh, by the way ... Bon Appetit!