Consider the Lobster

I went to the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday, though I only attended one event and browsed the books before having an iced coffee and an almond croissant and heading back home. (It was just too hot and sticky that day.)

I enjoyed the discussion I attended, but when the subject turned to suicide by authors, I was put off by the remark of one participant who said he thought of David Foster Wallace as “David Foster Child.” So this guy considers Wallace difficult and immature, I thought. Maybe so, but it was a rude thing to say, and in this context someone might get the idea that Wallace had killed himself.

Still, there was a nagging doubt in my mind, and when I got home I checked Wikipedia and found that it was so — making that remark even more insensitive than I’d thought.

I haven’t read Infinite Jest, but I found a lot to like in Wallace’s essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster, which I reviewed. As the title essay showed, Wallace combined literary playfulness with an unusual degree of compassion. Does a person who feels the suffering of lobsters this keenly eventually find the suffering of others too much to bear?