Hi _refugee_ I'm really happy that you have found something that speaks to you. I'd be interested to learn what impact it had on the way you see animals used for human consumption and pleasure? In what ways has it prompted you to change your lifestyle?

Personally, when I was a meat eater, this article would've never spoken to me. Firstly, because the first half is long winded and uninteresting and secondly because I'd have not been able to relate to crabs as much as I related to cows, pigs and chickens. Reading it now though, all the descriptions of how the crabs are treated make me feel sick and regretful that I was ever part of such heartless and barbaric tradition.

I have heard several testimonies of people who said they needed a "right kick up the butt" and became vegan only after watching a presentation by the controversial vegan activist Gary Yourofsky, whom many perceive as an arrogant and violent character. My point is one that I have repeated before. Because we're all at different stages in our awareness journey, I don't believe that there is any single method of animal rights activism that will speak to everyone and I'm sincerely sorry that my approach didn't reach you but as a fellow vegan once said:

If you aren't vegan and you're trying to tell me how best to get the message across - then just tell me what to say to you, and I'll say it back, and then you'll go vegan right?

Point being that for a lot of people no matter how the message is transmitted, they will always find a reason (excuse?) not to listen to it.

There are vegan nutritionists who try to make the case for veganism through their knowledge of the health requirements of the human body. There are vegan 'chefs' sharing recipes and vegan lifestyle tips and hints. There are vegan athletes and body builders who hope to inspire through their physical prowess. There are vegan artists trying to poke through the status quo bubble with humour and sarcasm. There are vegan gardeners, who try to reach people's compassion through their love for nature. There are law professors who use logic and reasoning to promote veganism. There are feminists who spread the connection between animal and female abuse. Heck, there are medical doctors who have dedicated their lives to promote the benefits of a plant based diet.

And then there is me, a web developer and second language English speaker, with a computer and severely lacking social skills who, like other vegans, feels frustrated at the senseless unnecessary subjugation and suffering imposed by our species on the rest of the animal kingdom, doing what I know to try and make the world a bit more conscious and a little less cruel. Even if I don't succeed at least it helps me sleep at night that I try.

I've caught a lot of lobster off the coast of LA. We hoop net by the breakwall in Redondo. Usually they're just over a foot long at the beginning of the season and by the end it's hard to find a legal one. I always let the men deal with the killing part. They use the "knife through the skull" method instead of the boiling alive method.

They also had the same mentality as the David Foster Wallace mentioned:

...plus that a willingness to exert personal agency and accept responsibility for stabbing the lobster’s head honors the lobster somehow and entitles one to eat it.

Typically we catch 10-20 lobsters a session, so the rest of the tails get frozen in milk cartons filled with ocean water until they are ready to be eaten. Fresh lobster is better, but 2 day old lobster that's been frozen in saltwater isn't noticeably different.

It is fucking ordeal to catch lobsters yourself – which is why those lobsters taste way better than the same lobsters from the fish market. We typically get down to the harbor at 4:30 or 5, grab some scraps of bait from the fish market, untangle the nets, hope there aren't maggots in them, put the bait scraps in pantyhose, tie those to the nets, find leftover 2 liter bottles in the recycling, put glowsticks in them, tie those to the nets, pack everything and a case of beer into the dingy, and set off. Then we drop all the nets one by one, circle back to the first one, pull it up, grab any lobster, check the length, throw them back if they are undersized, add new bait if it's gone, drop it the net back down, and repeat until we've hit our limit or we are too cold, wet, and stinky to do it anymore.

I never really thought about the killing part or pain that the lobster feel, beyond the fact that I'm too squeamish to take part in it myself. I don't necessarily like it but I don't know if it is better or worse than the slabs of pink meat I pick off the shelf at the grocery store every week. I have a higher respect for hunters who hunt, kill, skin, butcher, and eat their own meat than I have for myself picking $15 steaks out of a fridge. There really is something to eating something that required effort to obtain.

I don't know.

It's easier to ignore the death or horrible shit or pain or whatever. (This applies to everything - not just lobster.) Taking a moment to think about it instead of ignoring it or forcing it to the back of your mind is probably better in some sense. But it's also fucking depressing. One thing about being human is we get to rule this Earth - for better or for worse.

I think the takeaway from this piece is that we should all be more aware and reflective about the things we do, or animals we eat, or choices we make every day. The things that are easy to ignore can be quite interesting when examined – especially when examined by David Foster Wallace in ten thousand words. Does it mean that I'll stop eating lobster? No. Does it mean I'll think twice before throwing the lobster into the dingy next season? Not at all. But I'll probably think back to this essay next time I'm trying to wash the saltwater and fish smell out of my skin while licking my lips and watching lobster tails boil magnificently. Another thing about being human is we are capable of being reflective and empathetic. Maybe we should try to do more of the latter as we are ruling the world.

Pretend it's 2004. You've got a good set of knives, a decent set of pots, a subscription to Scientific American, a subscription to Newsweek and a subscription to Gourmet... because you like their recipes, and you like that they put their food first and foremost. It's an aspirational read, to be sure - you'll never own the Rolex they're selling inside the cover. You'll never enjoy whatever it is they're telling you is enjoyable on the coast of Mali. That cute new bed'n'breakfast that opened up in Fiji for $900 a night? You'll never stay there. It's fun to read about, but those pictures are as close as you'll ever get.

Oh, but the food.

Gourmet doesn't fuck around with food. They'll tell you how you have to eat mangosteens, and will even tell you how to smuggle them in your luggage. They'll tell you about all the great street food to be had in Havana, and will even tell you how to evade the US travel embargo. When it's Thanksgiving, they'll cook 140 turkeys 140 different ways in order to give you their best practices. Their recipes are so tried and true that people bind the issues and keep them for decades. I had a girlfriend with 1971-1979 bound in red leather; the Rolls Royce ads and all the coked up models with their Baccarat really made it.

So you open your August 2004 Gourmet, expecting barbecue snobbery, potato salad snobbery, how the true glitterati are taking in the sun in Bairritz, not East Hampton and oh by the way, Movados are for poseurs. And you turn the page, and there's David "Infinite Jest" Foster Wallace deciding you need to feel bad about eating lobster.

1) If you read Gourmet, your mind is made up about lobster.

2) If you've ever cooked a lobster, your mind is made up about lobster.

3) If you've ever eaten lobster, your mind is made up about lobster.

4) If your mind isn't made up about lobster, there are better avenues to discovery than Gourmet.

5) If your mind isn't made up about lobster, trudging through eight thousand words of David Foster Wallace isn't going to help.

It was controversial not because of anything it said. It was controversial the way Hunter S. Thompson stories are always controversial - "We asked you to write photo captions for an article on desert racing and you gave us Fear and Loathing." It was controversial because DFW clearly didn't give the first fuck about his audience, how to reach them, who they were or what he was being paid to write. It was controversial because DFW took Gourmet's money and then said "fuck everyone who reads Gourmet, lobsters are people, too."

Your average Gourmet reader overthought her food. She knew which store had better pie apples. She had a fishmonger she trusted. If she was a vegetarian, it's because she'd thought about it and come to her own conclusions. If she wasn't a vegetarian, it's because she'd thought about it and come to her own conclusions.

The DFW piece essentially says "you haven't ever thought about this, so I'm going to do it for you, you poor simp. Here's 20 footnotes."

In any event, at the Festival, standing by the bubbling tanks outside the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, watching the fresh-caught lobsters pile over one another, wave their hobbled claws impotently, huddle in the rear corners, or scrabble frantically back from the glass as you approach, it is difficult not to sense that they’re unhappy, or frightened, even if it’s some rudimentary version of these feelings …and, again, why does rudimentariness even enter into it? Why is a primitive, inarticulate form of suffering less urgent or uncomfortable for the person who’s helping to inflict it by paying for the food it results in? I’m not trying to give you a PETA-like screed here—at least I don’t think so.

Bitch, VEAL CRATES were legal in all 50 states in 2004. We were dropping phosphorus on Iraq. You wanna talk about impotent suffering, going gonzo over sea cockroaches is a stupid place to start.

Important note: like most people, I've never kept lobsters as pets. Unlike most people, I did have a 20-gallon tank with four eight-inch crawdads in it for several years. They were brought back from a science trip by my dad, who expected to eat them, but my sister and I decided the aquarium wasn't doing anything so we kept them there, next to the dining room table, from 2nd to 6th grade when we returned them to nature. Four hour drive. Turned it into a week-long camping trip. Empathy for crustaceans? I haz it.

Crawdads are not lobsters. They're about as close as you can get, though. There are houseplants that are more interesting than crawdads. Spiders are more interactive. If "sapient" (the word DFW misuses - it actually means "human-like") is a binary condition, then bacteria are "sapient." If "sapient" is a gradient, then lobsters are hella closer to bacteria than they are to chickens.

It's also 2004 - these have been on the air for 9 months.

Chicken Run was 4 years previous.

Finding Nemo was the year before. Babe Pig in the City five years before that. It's 2004 and cows, pigs, chickens, and fish all have cute little mascots that your son or daughter are likely to bring up around supper time and here comes David Foster Wallace, here to convince you that you should feel bad about eating something that would absolutely eat you if it could figure out how.

It's controversial because people don't read Gourmet to be lectured about their choices.

No lie. I cancelled my subscription over this article. My choice to eat lobster is not going to be dictated by some simp English teacher from Pomona College.

So this post finally convinced me to read "Consider the Lobster", even though it has been referenced numerous times in various lectures throughout undergrad and grad school. I think the way the article ends is a wonderfully pointed but still respectful arrow, directed towards those who are unwilling to have the conversation at all. Wallace so excellently convinces one that, at the very least, we should be willing to discuss and ponder the ethics of our eating habits unless we want to remain intellectually destitute for the sake of protecting our lifestyles.

The original link no longer resolves, so here's the article saved by the Internet Archive.

Don't nuke it, his link doesn't work.

EDIT: might as well mention that in my opinion DFW has happened upon the perfect phrase, as he so often does, to describe the situation -- it takes considerable "intellectual gymnastics" to allow yourself to eat a lobster and not feel bad in that indefinable way. But lobsters apparently taste good, I've never had one, so people do it anyway. This is human nature. The end.