| View Larger Image | Consider the Lobster and Other Essays | Paperbackby David Foster Wallace (Author)
| List Price: | $14.99 | | Price: | $10.19 | | You Save: | $4.80 (32%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Back Bay Books | | Edition: | Later printingth Edition | | Page Count: | 343 Pages | | Publication Date: | July 02, 2007 | | Sales Rank: | 5,598th |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780316013321
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the annual Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 57 reviews)
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Missing one key piece... by Michael Hoffman (Haslett, MI)  3 Stars
August 27, 2009
DFW's content is not the object of this review. Rather, I am reviewing (and objecting to) the Kindle version of the book, which does not include the marvelous essay, "Host." Although I (now) understand that the article in its original form used sidenotes that cannot be duplicated in the eBook format, it would have been nice to know that before hunting through the publication notes on my Kindle to discover this. It seems that either the sidenotes could be changed to footnotes and so duplicated, or the publisher and Amazon could let me know that what I am buying is a somewhat diminished version of the book.
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Refreshing ... by VanessaJ (San Diego, CA)  5 Stars
August 17, 2009
David Foster Wallace's, "Consider The Lobster," was the type of book I find myself drawn to. It is a collection of essays that DFW wrote without coming across as trying to force feed to his audience. He has a keen understanding of the world around him and a writing style that never felt forced or unduly authoritative. It seemed to me that he enjoyed deciphering what he saw, so that CTL felt like an insightful review of his experience including important questions that he felt need to be addressed. He makes SNOOTs and SNOOTery look good.
After reading CSL I moved on to Infinite Jest (which I still haven't finished - I am mostly drawn to his essays) and A Supposedly Fun Thing That I'll Never Do Again (enjoying it). It also turned me on to Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman, which, was very enjoyable.
I am more than a little aware of my inexperience and lack of technical skill while writing a review about an author as wonderful as DFW so I'll leave the long reviews for more eloquent critics.
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Semi-Ugh (updated) by Danny Volt (Michigan USA)  1 Stars
July 08, 2009
I gave this one star, but I should update it to 2. The essay that attracted me first was on English usage, but it seemed daunting to tackle it. But once I got into it, that alone lifted my rating slightly.
The rest of my early review went like this and is somewhat the same (unless I revise it again!):
I had contemplated getting a Wallace book for a couple of years. I found my way there in part because of Amazon cross-reference suggestions and such ("people who bought this also bought THIS, etc.) and then I checked into it ... from what I read, his subject matter and writing style seemed up my alley.
Maybe this was the wrong book to take the plunge, so I won't paint all his work with the same brush. But I found myself paging through this book, trying to find a good starting point. The Updike chapter was mildly interesting, but otherwise .... zzzzzz.
I'm not wasting any more time trying with this one.
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Amazing writing style by David Lifson (Seattle, WA USA) 5 Stars
June 29, 2009
You may or may not enjoy the topics he writes about - the first chapter chronicles his experience attending the Adult Video Awards - but the writing style is superb. Definitely worth reading.
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Is Harold Hecuba author and DFW friend Evan Wright? by M. Berenwink (Illinois) 5 Stars
April 28, 2009
Just finished re-reading this, AFTER reading Hella Nation by Evan Wright Hella Nation: Looking for Happy Meals in Kandahar, Rocking the Side Pipe, Wingnut's WarAgainst the GAP, and Other Adventures with the Totally Lost Tribes of America. Given Wright's introduction and "Life in Porn," AND DFW's thanks to Evan Wright at the end of his book, I'm thinking Harold Hecuba is Evan Wright. Re-reading DFW essays. Comment on Harold Hecuba, Evan Wright, link? Trying to make sense of what happened after DFW died, I read Wright quoted in some magazine about the great impact DFW had on him and all of us. Claremont has a course on DFW works only - found online. RIP.
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SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
by David Foster Wallace (Author)
This exuberantly praised--and uproariously funny--first collection of nonfiction pieces by one of the most acclaimed and adventurous writers of our time--the author of "Infinite Jest"--"reconfirms Mr. Wallace's stature as one of his generation's preeminent talents" ("New York Times") 5-city author tour. Print ads .
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| Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
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An exuberantly acclaimed collectiontwenty-two stories that com-- bine hilarity and an escalating disquiet as they expand our ideas of the pleasures fiction can afford. Wallace was recently selected by Time as one of the four outstanding young American writers. The hardcover was a bestselleron the Independent, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller lists.
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| Girl With Curious Hair
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This collection could possibly represent the first flowering of post-postmoderism: visions of the world that re-imagine reality as more realistic than we can imagine. A compelling presence of a holograph and the up-to-the-second feeling of the most advanced art.
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| Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace (Author)
A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts...
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| Oblivion: Stories
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In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity by...
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