Consider the Lobster

Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays

By David Foster Wallace

I like sports. I like almost everything about sports. I like the human drama, the potential for greatness (or tragedy) the story-lines and the athleticism. I like taking about sports, speculating about sports and listening to others talk about sports. And while I have my favorites (hockey, baseball and, these days, rugby) I've been known to sit down and enjoy virtually any sport on television. I'm not too discriminating. I like sports.

But there is one thing about sports I hate. I hate the media insistence on speaking with these athletes after a win or a loss. It'll go something like this:

Booth Announcer: Let's go down to Bob Sportscaster who's outside the locker room with Chet Superstar.

Bob Sportscaster: Thank you Booth. Chet, you guys put a win up on the board tonight. What was the team's strategy going into tonight's game.

Chet Superstar: Well Bob, we were just out there trying to make something happen, give it 110% and just play our game. We got a couple of lucky bounces that went our way and you've got to hand it to the boys in the locker room, we never gave up out there and we are just happy to come out of here with the win tonight.

You don't say.

There is nothing more pointless than listening to a professional athlete spew off a string of exhausted cliches. And sportscasters make entire careers out of sticking microphones in athlete's faces. Families eat, houses are bought, retirements are planned based on these useless and tedious repetitions. There is something repulsive about this idea.

I've always wondered whether there is a group of sports fans out there, slightly slow on the uptake, who are sitting in their armchairs thinking to themselves: "I wonder how Albert Pujols felt when he hit that game winning home run. I can't wait for the post-game interview. Maybe he was only giving 98% at the time."

Sheesh.

In Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace tackles this phenomenon deftly in an essay entitled How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart. Wallace reviews Austin's own book Beyond Center Court which Wallace characterizes as being "breathtakingly insipid." He peels back the layers of vapid text in an attempt to get to the root of the issue, namely that athletes seem to be extremely boring people, almost to the point of emotionless.

But whereas I see and understand the inanity of speaking to athletes about their professions, Wallace takes in a step further and opines that an athlete's emotionless demeanor in the face of massive public scrutiny and their seemingly uninspired quotes are a quality in itself. Athletes develop an ability to not think. To shut down and concentrate on the task at hand and not get distracted by the very real pressure of performing in from of million. They can actively not think.

But I digress.

What Wallace does, that I could never, ever do, is present a clear and thorough examination of a subject, far beyond that of your typical writer. Like any truly great writer, he sees things and thinks of things that others simply don't see or think about. He approaches subjects from angles other writers are simply unaware of. Whether it is the adult video industry (Big Red Son), the dictionary wars (Authority and American Usage), the darker side of right wing talk radio (Host) or whether lobsters really do feel pain when they are boiled alive (Consider the Lobster), Wallace brings a distinct brand of nuance, insight and comedy that is a refreshing break from most other writers.

The centerpiece of this collection is a masterful account of Wallace's time spent covering the John McCain campaign for Rolling Stone during the 2000 Republican primaries (Up, Simba). Rather than your typical political piece (It doesn't seem like Wallace ever talked to McCain directly), he chronicles the daily grind of the tech staff, the interns, the assistants. He exhaustively documents the travel, the badly catered meals, the endless boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts all wrapped in a package of co-ax cables and opportunities to smoke. All of this over the backdrop of the Chris Duren Affair, a rather conveniently placed episode that occurred during the South Carolina primary.

His essay is akin to eavesdropping on the servants, cooks and the jesters at a king's court. We learn that even the lowest, unpaid intern has a very real investment in the campaign and everyone from McCain down to the boom mike operators for his town hall meetings (THM) understand the implications of each potential political move during the campaign. It is a very real assessment on leadership and what it means to lead.

And this is why Consider the Lobster is not for everyone. Wallace's brand of humor and insight might strike readers as beside the point, overly academic or even obtuse. But Wallace is an unapologetic observer of people and doesn't seem inclined to give his subjects a free pass, so to speak. There are no softballs here. No ally-oops or empty-net goals. Consider the Lobster is every bit as insightful as Tom Brady's post-game interview is not.

Where Men Win Glory

Where Men Win Glory

By Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer has always had an innate ability to dive headlong into a topic and deliver a nuanced look into subjects that are poorly understood by the general public. Mountain-climbing. Mormon fundamentalism. Survivalism. Like him or hate him, Krakauer brings the details. All of them. Where Men Win Glory is no exception.

So it seemed logical that Krakauer would tackle (no pun intended) the story of Pat Tillman, the former strong safety for the Arizona Cardinals who walked away from his multi-million dollar NFL contract to enlist in the American Army following America's invasion of Afghanistan in 2002. A vast majority of us would have a hard time understanding the logic behind that decision. Krakauer does his best to explain it while setting up his broader narrative for its collision course with tragedy.

Like in his prior books, Krakauer weaves a broad history of the narrative setting around a focused microcosm in an all encompassing storyline that leaves readers literally swimming in facts and quotes about complicated people in complicated situations.

Krakauer pushes beyond the stereotypes of the football player-turned-Army Ranger and exposes a far more subtle account of Pat Tillman, the man rather than Pat Tillman the manufactured legend. A man that was far more than the sum of his parts. Like he did with Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild, Krakauer digs deeper into Tillman's personality to reveal an atypical American jock, a far cry from the theatrical beer-swilling, date-raping Gridiron stereotype. Tillman was a thoughtful, moralistic and complicated character and I thought Krakauer handled him deftly. Krakauer presents Tillman and his family as sympathetic (albeit flawed) people with strong familial bonds. But he is careful to honor Tillman's legacy without mythologizing him. By the end of the novel, the reader really feels as if they know Pat Tillman and understand him, regardless of politics or religion. While some might be put off by his heavy-handed approach, I think it was necessary to understand the full extent of who Pat Tillman was and why he did what he did. It helps understand the tragedy that unfolded in 2004.

Pat Tillman fell in battle during an ambush in on the Afghan-Pakistan border region. He was shot in the head and died instantly. He was a true American patriot cut down by Taliban forces. He was a man who turned away from riches to serve his country and make the ultimate sacrifice. An unbelievable tragedy.

Unbelievable, of course, because it never actually happened. As most already know, Tillman's death was a result of "friendly fire" (a term I am very uncomfortable with. What fire is ever friendly?) and the events immediately following his death were shrouded in mystery and inconsistencies.

It's not an issue of "friendly fire" so much. Casualties by friendly fire are common. Much more common than most are lead to believe. It happens. Often. It's called the fog of war and no technology has ever been produced to alleviate this problem. The issue was: why did the Army cover up the true cause of death for so long? Especially when it was obvious almost immediately after Tillman's death that it was fratricide. This becomes the crux of the second half of the book.

As backdrop, Krakauer spends a large portion of this book chronicling the way in which Osama Bin Laden orchestrated the American invasion of Afghanistan via terrorist activity (culminating in the attacks of September 11th). He wanted to lure the Americans into an unwinnable quagmire where America would be somehow exposed. From their, Krakauer details the manner in which the Bush government steered American opinion toward war in Iraq and, once there, how they continued to massage and spin the truth in order to maintain the popularity of the war on the home front.

There is an excellent side story detailing the saga of Jessica Lynch, the soldier taken captive in Iraq in the first days of the war. What was fed to the public ("She went down fighting to the death") compared to the truth ("She was on a maintenance team, her vehicle was involved in a serious accident, she suffered serious injuries, was transported by Iraqis to an Iraqi hospital where she received compassionate care and never once discharged her gun) is startlingly unscrupulous. It's ironic that Pat Tillman was one of the 1000 Rangers deployed in the Jessica Lynch "rescue mission."

So it comes as no surprise that Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan was used and abused in the same manner. When Tillman died in 2004, Bush was up for re-election and a series of embarrassing setbacks was promising to do real harm to his chances at a second term. The Tillman cover-up was done in order to dilute the negative publicity generated by the disaster unfolding in Fallujah and Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Lauding the sacrifice of Pat Tillman, easily America's most famous soldier, became a political toy to lessen the damage of other stories. Death by "friendly fire" simply didn't fit the hero narrative.

Once Krakauer begins to unravel the complicated web of lies, deceits and half-truths told by the army and the Bush Administration is becomes hard to stomach. Literally. There were moments during the latter half of this book where I felt physically ill about the way in which someone's legacy could be so misrepresented and trodden on so completely.

Where Men Win Glory is a difficult book to finish. It's sickening look as the way in which out leaders use and abuse us in order to maintain power and further their own agendas. The fact that Tillman's death was used as propaganda to muscle through a particularly difficult news cycle. If you weren't disenchanted with your leaders before reading this, you most certainly will be when you finish.