The entire list of essays is as follows:
"Big Red Son"Wallace's account of his visit to the AVN Awards, an event that has been dubbed the
Academy Awards of pornographic film, and its associated
AVN Expo. Originally published in the September 1998 issue of
Premiere magazine as "Neither Adult Nor Entertainment" under the pseudonyms Willem R. deGroot and Matt Rundlet.
"Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think"A review of
John Updike's novel
Toward the End of Time. Originally published as "John Updike, Champion Literary Phallocrat, Drops One; Is This Finally the End for Magnificent Narcissists?” in the October 12, 1997 issue of
New York Observer.
"Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed"Text of speech given by David Foster Wallace in March 1998 at a symposium sponsored by the PEN American Center in New York City to celebrate the publication of a new translation of
Franz Kafka's 1920s novel
The Castle by
Schocken Books. Originally published as "Laughing with Kafka" in the July 1998 issue of
Harper's Magazine.
"Authority and American Usage"A 62-page review of
Bryan A. Garner's
A Dictionary of Modern American Usage. Wallace applies
George Orwell's "
Politics and the English Language" to grammar and the conditions of class and power in millennial American communication. While discussing the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammar, Wallace digresses to discuss the legitimacy of Ebonics as opposed to "white male" standard English. Originally published as "Tense Present: Democracy, English and Wars over Usage" in the April 2001 issue of
Harper's Magazine.
"The View from Mrs. Thompson's"Wallace's account of
September 11 attacks as he experienced it in his hometown of
Bloomington,
Illinois, where he taught English at
Illinois State University. To the surprise of many of his readers, Wallace refers to some of his neighbors as fellow church members. Originally published in the October 25, 2001 issue of
Rolling Stone.
"How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart"A scathing review of tennis star Tracy Austin's autobiography, extending into a general critique of the mass-produced ghostwritten sports autobiographies then flooding the market. Originally published in the August 30, 1992 issue of the
Philadelphia Inquirer.
"Up, Simba"Wallace writes about
John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, riding the bus called "The Straight Talk Express". The title is what a television news cameraman covering the campaign says before hoisting his camera onto his shoulder. Originally published in the April 2000 issue of
Rolling Stone as "The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys And The Shrub", and as an e-book through Random House's iPublish imprint; later republished in the context of the 2008 presidential race as "McCain's Promise". The essay won the 2001 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing.
"Consider the Lobster"Originally published in the August 2004 issue of
Gourmet magazine, this review of the 2003 Maine Lobster Festival generated some controversy among the readers of the culinary magazine. The essay is concerned with the ethics of boiling a creature alive in order to enhance the consumer's pleasure, including a discussion of lobster sensory neurons.
"Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky"Review of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's biography written by Stanford University professor Joseph Frank. Originally titled "Feodor's Guide" and published in the April 9, 1996 issue of
The Village Voice.
"Host"A profile of
John Ziegler, a
Los Angeles-based conservative
talk radio show host who is obsessed with the O. J. Simpson murder case. Wallace examines the impact of Clear Channel-type media monopolies and the proliferation of talk radio on the way Americans talk, think, and vote. Instead of his trademark footnotes, the publication featured arrows that connected tangential ideas to each other on the page. The profile was originally published in the April 2005 issue of
The Atlantic, where it can be read online; the online version transforms the lines and boxes to hyperlinks, which were likely Wallace's inspiration. The article was a finalist of the 2006 National Magazine Award for Profile Writing.
The book received positive reviews from critics. The review aggregator Metacritic reported the book had an average score of 68 out of 100, based on 15 reviews.
An audiobook, read by Wallace himself, was published in 2005 by Time Warner Audiobooks. The three CD set contains complete readings of the following essays: “Consider the Lobster”, “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s”, “Big Red Son”, and “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart”.
