I don't usually do nonfiction, but I just finished a dense book about archaeology and ancient civilizations and so as not to dive head first into Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (I've never been a jumper, I'm always the vocal easer-inner climbing down the stairs at the shallow end) I picked out a few select essays from DFW's collection "Consider the Lobster" to cleanse the palate. A suitable transition from dense nonfiction to absurdist fiction. It's been almost a year since I've read any DFW (as it was a year ago I exhausted all of his fiction) and in a short year's time I had forgotten what a god DFW is. Pure genius, he was given the gift of acuity, articulation and relatability. His essays are brilliant. The title essay "Consider the Lobster" was a paid assignment with Gourmet magazine. They thought they were sending a best-selling author to a lobster festival for an interesting, non-recipe article and it devolves into a cynical persuasive argument for vegetarianism. And the essay "How Tracy Austen Broke my Heart" is like all of his essays: ridiculous, circumambulatory, conversational-- and then clenches with a piercing thesis that is the last paragraph-- hell, maybe only the last sentence. You come up sputtering, grinning, it rings so crystal- clear, you wonder how it's possible. DFW should have written the bible. He's good at "dense", he's got a strong moral compass, an understanding of human nature and a talent for relaying wisdom. But alas, my god is dead. And he had one message anyways: empathy. And he delivered it so eloquently in the only speech he ever made: This is water. That is my bible.
