书籍介绍
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.
AI导读
核心看点
- 探讨龙虾是否感知痛苦的伦理困境
- 剖析美国流行文化与深层道德焦虑
- 展现独特叙事风格与犀利社会观察
适合谁读
- 大卫·福斯特·华莱士的忠实读者
- 喜爱深度非虚构随笔的文学爱好者
- 关注社会伦理与流行文化现象的读者
读前提醒
- 做好应对高密度词汇与复杂句式的准备
- 关注作者对日常事物进行的哲学式追问
- 注意文本中幽默讽刺与严肃反思的交织
读者共识
- 作者才华横溢，行文兼具幽默与深刻
- 阅读体验极佳，常令人拍案叫绝或深思
- 是了解作者思想与美式文化的重要入门作
本导读基于书籍简介、目录、原文摘录、短评和书评生成，不等同于全文精读。
精彩摘录
- "** Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I’m bullshitting myself, morally speaking? ** ** What exactly doe"
- "As a practical matter, I strongly doubt whether a guy who has four small kids and makes $12,000 a year feels more empowered or less ill-used by a society that carefully refers to him as "economically disadvantaged" rather than "poor." Where I he, in fact, I'd probably find the Politically Correct En"
- "Helping [most college writers] eliminate the [most persistent and damaging error] involves drumming into student writers two big injunctions: (1) Do not presume that the reader can read your mind -- anything that you want the reader to visualize or consider or conclude, you must provide; (2) Do not "
- "He and Hecuba ended up over coffee, and when H.H. finally cleared his throat and asked the cop why such an obviously decent fellow squarely on the side of the law and civic virtue was a porn fan, the detective confessed that what drew him to the films was “the faces,” i.e. the actresses’ faces, i.e."
- "It’s very easy to gloss over the PoW thing, partly because we’ve heard so much about it and partly because it’s so off the charts dramatic, like something in a movie instead of a man’s life. But it’s worth considering for a moment, because it’s what makes McCain’s “causes greater than self-interest”"
- "But if you, like poor old Rolling Stone, have come to a point on the Trail where you've started fearing your own cynicism almost as much as you fear your own credulity and the salesmen who feed on it, you may find your thoughts returning again and again to a certain dark and box-sized cell in a cert"
- "The four extant volumes of Dostoevsky make it clear that the crucial, catalyzing event in FMD's life, ideologically speaking, was the mock execution of 22 December 1849 during which this weak, neurotic, self-involved young writer believed that he was about to die. What resulted inside Dostoevsky was"
- "...I will confess that I even borrowed a friend's battered leather jacket to wear on the Trail so I'd better project the kind of edgy, vaguely dangerous vibe I imagined an RS (Rolling Stone) reporter ought to give off.."
目录
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 -- Host.
用户评论
变身DFW迷妹。
很久没有经历过被一本书勾引得读到天亮的感受。DFW是个极其聪明有着巨大词汇量以无限耐心做research并且highly aware of human vulnerability 的essayist
顺便推荐big think的podcast，有一期是Ruth Reichl讲Consider the Lobster的背后故事。
“后现代味儿的道德说教”，特流畅、特好笑、特适合增长奇怪的词汇量并为奇怪的议题进行无果的脑力劳动。终于被DFW正式圈粉，隆重地将Infinite Jest加入kindle以期自己在年内可以读完。“天才”这种评价虽然超cliché，但他行文的节奏、提出问题和审视问题（而非给出答案）的角度以及幽默和深刻之间的微妙平衡实在太吸引我了，啊，必须找机会好好吹一波。毛片产业和龙虾节这两篇题材本身就很独特很有趣，麦凯恩那篇绝对是我看得最津津有味的政治/竞选相关文章，一下子让我想到The Newsroom里的一段剧情，在Bloomington（！）经历911那篇的视角、氛围和情感也极别致，而评语用词典那篇则让我从专业和三观的角度都觉得很爽，以及，他顺带批评了学术英语，导致我不得不审视自己论文中的措辞。
DFW真的极聪明又有写作才华 他愿意去参与并且去写美国社会、尤其是其pop culture的种种，简直是美国文化的幸运。。
Or: The Importance of Being Earnest (and Why It’s Impossible—Almost). Strange how an author who’s garnered notoriety for an alleged appeal to frat boys happens to be among the least cynical voices America has ever known. There’s something quaint and resonant (and shall we say deeply Midwestern?) about DFW’s insistence on sincerity as a way of life.
最喜欢的要数美国总统选举那一篇，因为不了解，读起来也就格外有趣；其次是毛片颁奖礼，根本恶趣味爆表；相较之下，同名小龙虾则显得平平无奇，对素食者的吐槽也没觉得有多新奇。
DFW是文字天才这一点我确信无疑，却被他这套层出不穷的“抖机灵”抖到险些审美疲劳，或是本庸人欣赏不来罢了
就着油管上华莱士自己的有声书读了和书同名的一篇，好幽默，"you can imagine, unimaginable"; 好不留情，把对于吃肉的正当性的所有自欺欺人掀了个底朝天，然而他自己也不是素食主义，他的主张可能是“可以吃肉，但不要骗自己这是合道德的”，可是我觉得像他这样又吃又想聊道德才有点虚伪呢😥；对龙虾的博物学和神经生物学描写好自然，快速学习一个领域的的知识然后生动准确地讲述的能力真是令人佩服。最后，他的声音和r好像我收藏起来反复听听呜呜呜…
太喜欢了，想成为Wallace眼中的小龙虾…
An oddly fascinating human brain, with some beautiful singularity, smiled outwardly at his inward thoughts.
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