I almost didn't read this when I bought the book as I have little-to-no interest in Maine, lobsters or lobster festivals. The first few pages give you the indication that that's all it's about.
Then, about mid-way through, it morphs into a marvelous meditation on the nature of consciousness and the ethics of killing and eating animals.
I actually found his talks of Maine and travel in general very interesting. I really liked this from one of the footnotes:
"To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing."
"It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you."
This is one of those sentences that sounds insightful, but in reality is pretty surprisingly shallow.
The entire problem underlying such a viewpoint is a focus on yourself and not the place. On your experience of the experience and not the experience itself.
If you stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and all you can think about is how it's spoiled by the presence of tour buses plowing through for half hour visits, you're missing the significant part of the experience. Hell, just one layer of thought deeper and you're thinking about the slow-moving timescale of the canyon vs the almost instantaneous visits of the tourists.
The mass tourists are a source of perspective, and to treat them as some sort of spoiler of the experience is in a way a denial of reality. In very real ways, they're an essential part of the experience.
What is the Mona Lisa without an adoring (but very transitory) throng?
You make a great point, yet I'm still able to identify with what the author was saying.
I oddly think about this a lot without really recognizing it. It may sound silly, but to me what makes the difference is the event itself. Being a tourist at a museum, natural landmark and so can feel so much different than being a tourist at a local watering hole. Taking a natural landmark as an example, I view it as if the locals can't claim it as their own and it's meant to be shared and interpreted by the world. Museums are practically enablers for tourism so locals can't be upset about that.
But, when it comes to a local food or drink joint, tucked away in a neighborhood of sub-cultures, I can't help but feel as if I'm intruding. To focus on the experience at a place known as being "best authentic food X in city Y" or "great neighborhood bar, one of the best in city Y" is to focus on the brick and mortar, the customers, the employees. Given just the right media attention or online review a place can become a tourist petri dish and the atmosphere can be entirely thrown off. Although, there sits the problem as without at least some attention I wouldn't have known about it.
That probably comes across as selfish, but it's not about me. There's many cases where a place becomes successful, patronage changes, ownership ends up changing hands a year or two later, and the place isn't what it used to be. I think there is something to be said for protecting local sub-cultures which is what I viewed the authors point to be.
I don't think you've addressed the sort of nearly completely manufactured experience that really qualifies as mass tourism.
You know, all the little destinations that are really well known for their fudge, or Disney whatever.
Or in the story, where the experience differs from eating lobster only in that an unusually large number of people are also eating lobster in the vicinity.
Right. Living cultures are alive, pretty much by definition. Which means they change, they react, they interact. Indeed, that's how those cultures formed in the first place.
No culture has ever formed in a vacuum.
Instead of some imaginary culture, one that you somehow think would be "more real" (a total fallacy on several levels) without tourists, you have a real, live, thriving culture in front of you, around you. In fact, as a mass tourist, you're a part of it.
The more insightful take is not to bemoan that the culture isn't some platonic ideal of itself locked in amber, but experience it for what it is- living, breathing, changing around you. Because of you.
Paris wouldn't be Paris without centuries of travelers and visitors behind it.
You're a part of that evolution, see that for what it is and enjoy it.
>The more insightful take is not to bemoan that the culture isn't some platonic ideal of itself locked in amber, but experience it for what it is- living, breathing, changing around you. Because of you.
Only lots of cultures just die under tourism, and just remain as disneyland-like versions of themselves.
You give the example of Paris, but Paris is a huge cosmopolitan city, and has been so for centuries. It's not the kind of place that can't withstand a tourist influx.
Being conscious of the experience of the experience is I think a central part of Postmodern expression. This is more a criticism of Postmodernity than DFW.
IMO reading about the experience of the experience is what makes his travel essays so interesting. See also: "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again", and "Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All"
I find that quite a conceited view of mass tourism, borne of the fact that the author has a "fantasy of being a real individual, of living somehow outside and above it all." Sometimes it is fun to be a tourist at a place where there are other tourists around. And I hate that he says tourists are "economically significant but existentially loathsome". If it weren't for tourists, many tourist attractions would be neglected because firstly there would be no point in maintaining them, and secondly, there would be no money to maintain them.
> If it weren't for tourists, many tourist attractions would be neglected because firstly there would be no point in maintaining them, and secondly, there would be no money to maintain them.
Or, in other words, they are economically significant.
The whole quote I am contesting is "economically significant but existentially loathsome", and my point is that not only are tourists not existentially loathsome, but they give purpose to the maintenance of attractions.
Near Reykjavik there's a site called something like the Golden Falls. It's a pretty waterfall. I joined a busload of retirees and other holiday-makers on a tour of sites. We stopped there, went for a walk along the concrete, saw the waterfall, photos, spent five minutes in the tourist shop, and then got back in the bus.
I considered the golden waterfalls as they would have been to hikers for centuries: a visual oasis that people stumble upon or towards after hiking for days. That would have been glorious. But - apart from these thoughts - it was otherwise meaningless.
You can't appreciate such a thing from the comfort of a bus journey and concrete walkways. The presence of the trappings of tourism would significantly deplete the value of the thing if you had hiked to it like the ancients had. Unless you were thirsty. Or injured.
And food tastes much, much better if you work hard and abstain for hours beforehand. But few of us get to do that. Maybe that's why we demand ever-more-vivid food experiences as we age? Bored of chicken soup and good bread, we want McCheese with curly fries or ultra-hot-sauce wings.
DFW always came across as a wanker to me because of these sorts of thoughts.
There is a lot more to life than DFW's conception of what constitutes a "pristine" or "authentic" experience.
Lifestyles and ways of making a livelihood are always coming and going in this world. DFW would make a religion out of a a particular time/place and way of living. That is essentially what his philosophy boils down to.--nostalgia raised up high like its the most holy and pure of feelings.
His command of English was so good, and his way of phrasing things so beautiful, that a whole generation of readers was seduced by his pretty simplistic view of the world.
Right, I caught a hint of that when he started talking about about the history (and pre-history) of lobsters. I thought, "Okay, this is actually interesting." Then it got a lot better later.
I read the first three sentences, and came back here to comment. Each is a fabulous joke, and I had 3 lol moments, and I wonder if anybody else laughed like I did?
I am a big fan of DFW on the basis of reading "The Pale King" alone, and haven't read this before.
1. "... the nerve stem of Maine's lobster industry." I full expect him to exploit this imagery later :-)
2. "... runs from Owl’s Head" Oh, God, already.
3. "... whose summer traffic is, as you can imagine, unimaginable."
4. "... Harbor Park, right along the water." Redundancy from an author concerned with economy of expression... oh, this is deliberate! He's making fun of the absurdity of town called Rockland. It's by the sea. Some sense of absurdity is subtle.
5. "... Camden by the sea, Rockland by the smell.” Economic status of Rockland explained.
That's in the first 3 sentences... I hate to "spell it out" but hopefully I can encourage people to read other stuff by DFW in so doing. The themes in the Pale King could certainly help some people in technical communities make sense of what it is they are doing.
OK, enough proselytizing, and literary-criticism-ism-ing back to reading now... I won't be back.
If you started with Pale King and already love him youre in for a real treat. Not that Pale King is bad, just obviously incomplete (which it necessarily was, unfortunately).
Also a great essay and, I believe, retitled for the collection it later was a part of called "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". A title which perfectly captured how I thought about the first (and last) cruise I ever took.
Funny; the essay made me want to go a cruise even more! I still agree that it is one of his finest essays. I rank it up there with The String Theory, which is my personal favorite.
Yes, it's all part of the experience. Reportedly, DFW liked the idea of jarring readers out of a steady progression through his text and used all kinds of notes to effect this.
I am a 13th generation Mainer with family in the lobster business, both in fishing and processing, and I have worked on the waters sailing on schooners on the Maine coast as a young lad.
Maine is a state that lives off the land, fishing and forestry are huge industries that provide thousands of jobs and sustain the state the other 10 months when tourism is dormant.
The lobster industry is the most sustainable fishery in the world, as others are going extinct the lobster fishery is thriving. We come from the land and we care for the animals and the environment.
Current technology used in processing lobster is orders of magnitude more humane than described in Consider the Lobster [0] and other food processing facilities pale in comparison (i'm looking at you whaling industry, fishing industry, livestock industry, etc.
We now have the technology to kill lobster instantaneously while simultaneously killing all bacteria and creating raw lobster meat that can be shipped globally.
Personally I like the intimacy of being close to killing the animals we eat, it's authentic, I think it gives acknowledgment to the animal's life at a level that is not even close to supermarket bought meats. What other animal do people kill in their own kitchen in SF or NYC? I think we need more of the intimacy with our food that lobster provides. The question is would you like to have animal butchering behind closed doors (because we know where that path leads) or do we want an intimacy with our food, our farmers and our fishermen?
"Personally I like the intimacy of being close to killing the animals we eat, it's authentic"
This is such an bizarre statement. Something like "I like the intimacy of being close to [a horrendous thing]".
I mean I agree that it's better done outwith closed doors, but really it seems the reason that everyone is OK with it is because lobsters aren't as cute (or at least as conducive to being empathized with) as calves, chicks and lambs. Which doesn't seem like a logical way to choose what we kill.
And if haven't already done so, read his commencement speech to Kenyon College class of 2005, or better listen to it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI) (Later published as a book titled This is Water). It's a life-enhancing experience.
"I am also concerned not to come off as shrill or preachy when what I really am is confused."
The older I get the more I realize this seems to be the appropriate response to the world. In Zen circles this approaches the idea of the Beginner's Mind, and seems to be an incredibly powerful way to approach a contentious topic.
Consider The Lobster was my first exposure to DFW. The first time I heard it I thought this guy was crazy and didn't take it seriously. After a while I realized that DFW is one of the best authors that ever lived.
His writing is incredibly dense so you have to space it out and be very focused when you read, but its worth it.
Interestingly I just has to read this a week or two ago, and I really did find it to be a great essay. My professor used this as a perfect example of an essay crafted to bring together both information and experience in an engaging piece.
Deals with the concept of feeling like a fraud (which seems to come up here a lot), amongst other things. Occasionally hilarious, often sad, then it gets awesome towards the end, although I won't spoil it.
Then, about mid-way through, it morphs into a marvelous meditation on the nature of consciousness and the ethics of killing and eating animals.
God, I miss that guy.