Consider the Lobster

I think I really do enjoy reading short stories.  I finished Consider the Lobster by David Wallace Foster and said, "this is great!"  What an eclectic writer.  I’ll highlight a few of the stories so you get the idea.  In "Consider the Lobster," Wallace discusses the annual Maine Lobster Festival which brings locals out in droves.  The reader learns about the evolution of the lobster as a delicacy in the US, it wasn’t always so!  Amazing how once a market for something starts how costly that item can become.  The remainder of the essay focuses on the ethics of how a lobster is prepared.   When you really think about the options (boiling, sticking a cutting instrument in the lobster’s eye socket, or ripping appendages off), it isn’t very pretty, huh?  PETA has a field day on these treatments, I’m sure.  Wallace has the reader think twice about next year’s Maine Lobster Fest, or maybe not?  Other stories include his experience during 9/11 while at his hometown in Bloomington, Illinois and how small town folks felt the pang during the crashing of the towers.  Another story was “How Tracey Austin Broke My Heart” which chronicles the amazing rise to fame as a teenage phenom on the courts followed by her very strange series of debilitating injuries, all under the guise of “strange bad luck”.   And finally one of my favorites was "Big Red Son," Wallace’s trip to the AVN (Adult Video News) annual awards ceremony for the best pornographic movies.  Wallace captures the stereotypes of the industry, the underbelly (so to speak), and how an outsider experiences it.  Amazing how the industry is one of the largest in the world today.  Crazy amounts of money and a culture that is legitimized in so many ways by the purchasing power of the American people.  Wallace gives his own thoughts during his visit.  As you can tell, Wallace was talented and diverse in his scope of intellectual interests.  It is too bad he left this world so young.  I look forward to reading his epic, Infinite Jest in the coming months.  I’d pick this one up.  Interesting read!