Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays

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 als

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David Foster Wallace (9)

There are limits to what even interested persons can ask of each other.

— David Foster Wallace, amazon.com

Relationships separation Limitations Love one perfect sentence

Like all good ad clichés, it manages to suggest everything and mean nothing.

— David Foster Wallace, amazon.com

Advertising Cliches

To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people.

— David Foster Wallace, amazon.com

Fandom Icons Famous Fame Famous People

The horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.

— David Foster Wallace, amazon.com

The Journey Is The Destination Forever Fighting Life Struggle It Never Ends

Progressive liberals seem incapable of stating the obvious truth: that we who are well off should be willing to share more of what we have with poor people not for the poor people’s sake but for our own; i.e., we should share what we have in order to become less narrow and frightened and lonely and…

— David Foster Wallace, amazon.com

Politics Self-Intrest Morality Ethics

Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I’m bullshitting myself, morally speaking?

— David Foster Wallace, amazon.com

Who Am I Identity Deep

There are limits to what even interested persons can ask of each other.

— David Foster Wallace, amazon.com

Limits Conversation How Deep Can We Talk?

Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?

— David Foster Wallace, amazon.com

Lobsters Killing Things Boiling Lobsters

Every time someone I know decides to terminate a pregnancy, I am required to believe simultaneously that she is doing the wrong thing and that she has every right to do it.

— David Foster Wallace, amazon.com

Pro-Life Pro-Choice Abortion

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