essay #1

consider the lobster (david foster wallace)

raw reflections on this essay:

Maine Lobster Promotion Council- Orwellian name
calm, matter of fact language, well-paced progression through the festival, then the lobster...

hah, "irksome little downers"- he's quietly cutting down the festival
Professor Paddywhack- hilarious
footnote 6: "disappointed in a way you can never admit…" damn…
pulling on the antennae, if it comes out of the head easily you're ready to eat… ooh. damn.
nicely mixes matter of fact with subtle distaste.
Jesus, de-beaking.
"Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive?…" the key question arrives.
footnote 10 about the parade- hilarious
"we do not have access to anyone or anything's pain but our own"- a fascinating, powerful truth delivered quite matter of factly.
haha, so great when you remember that this is an article in a culinary magazine. damn.
footnote 14, very interesting point.
"prepared" which means killing them there in our kitchens…
talking about the lobster struggling to get out of the boiling pot and the cowardice of leaving the room, can't bear to witness what you're doing, tuning it out.
it generally takes lobsters 35-45 seconds to die in boiling water.
Jesus, his descriptions of hte ways to kill lobster… pretty gruesome
"there remains the fact of the frantically clanking lid"
very sad when he talks about how their conditions in captivity (crowded, bright light) are so obviously against their preferences
the point about Roman circus/ medieval torture fest, pretty interesting
the line about "truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient"- great, smart, honest line. yeah.


I wonder if it's worth it to organize these observations into a more coherent, paragraph format. In a way, the raw reflections speak perfectly for themself. Maybe for shorter essays I'll just leave the raw reflections and provide a final thought synopsis at the end. Anyway, I'll edit this post a tiny bit later.