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.

Contains: "Big Red Son," "Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think," "Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed," "Authority and American Usage," "The View from Mrs. Thompson's," "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart," "Up, Simba," "Consider the Lobster," "Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky" and "Host".

Mailing it to Edinburg!

Arrived today as part of a cross-country book exchange, thank you Alex!

The author's style really got on my nerves. He used way too many footnotes, and some of those footnotes have footnotes, and within those footnotes there are more little notes... It really interrupts the flow, and the print is already so tiny anyway, it was really hard to read. I can't help but wonder if he is taking the piss when he does that, particularly in the last one, Host, with all the boxes and arrows pointing to each other. It was like reading snakes and ladders! He was clearly a very smart guy, but it shouldn't be that hard to incorporate what he has to say into the main narrative without all those "clever" little asides. They were already too long as they were.

Some of the topics were interesting (I liked the one about language and social status) but others I couldn't connect with, maybe because I am not American, so I had no idea what he was talking about when he discussed John McCain's election campaign or the radio host John Ziegler. And I couldn't care less about all those porn stars and their stupid award show. That story put me off from the start, maybe it would have been better if a different story was at the beginning of the book.

I tagged someone with it so I sent it a couple of days ago. Hope you enjoy!

It's here! Thanks, teapot :-)
I love David Foster Wallace so I'm very excited to receive this book. I can understand that his style is not to everyone's taste, though.

I'm used to DFW's footnotes and footnotes-within-footnotes, but even so, I nearly skipped the last piece in the collection with all the boxes pointing to other boxes. But once I started, I got drawn in and hardly noticed the unusual layout. Overall, I had a range of reactions to the essays: fascination (Up, Simba; Host), morbid fascination (Big Red Son), interest (Consider the Lobster), interest with extra effort (Authority and American Usage), meh (How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart) and skip (the one about Dostoyevsky).

I preferred his other book of non-fiction, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again", especially the piece that gives the collection its title.

Picked up at today's BCBrum meet up - will be taking it to leave in the Woodland Library at End of The Road festival, Larmer Tree Gardens next week.

To be released on the bookshelf in the Woodland Library.

If this is your first experience with BookCrossing, thanks so much for picking up this book and coming to the BookCrossing website to find out what it's all about. Welcome to the addictive world of BookCrossing!

I look forward to hearing what you thought of this book, and of your plans for it.