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David Foster Wallace

Consider the Lobster

The enormous, pungent, and extremely well marketed Maine Lobster Festival is held every late July in the state’s midcoast region, meaning the western side of Penobscot Bay, the nerve stem of Maine’s lobster industry. What’s called the midcoast runs from Owl’s Head and Thomaston in the south to Belfast in the north. (Actually, it might extend all the way up to Bucksport, but we were never able to get farther north than Belfast on Route 1, whose summer traffic is, as you can imagine, unimaginable.) The region’s two main communities are Camden, with its very old money and yachty harbor and five-star restaurants and phenomenal B&Bs, and Rockland, a serious old fishing town that hosts the Festival every summer in historic Harbor Park, right along the water. 1

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Tourism and lobster are the midcoast region’s two main industries, and they’re both warm-weather enterprises, and the Maine Lobster Festival represents less an intersection of the industries than a deliberate collision, joyful and lucrative and loud. The assigned subject of this article is the 56th Annual MLF, July 30 to August 3, 2003, whose official theme was “Lighthouses, Laughter, and Lobster.” Total paid attendance was over 80,000, due partly to a national CNN spot in June during which a Senior Editor of a certain other epicurean magazine hailed the MLF as one of the best food-themed festivals in the world. 2003 Festival highlights: concerts by Lee Ann Womack and Orleans, annual Maine Sea Goddess beauty pageant, Saturday’s big parade, Sunday’s William G. Atwood Memorial Crate Race, annual Amateur Cooking Competition, carnival rides and midway attractions and food booths, and the MLF’s Main Eating Tent, where something over 25,000 pounds of fresh-caught Maine lobster is consumed after preparation in the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker near the grounds’ north entrance. Also available are lobster rolls, lobster turnovers, lobster sauté, Down East lobster salad, lobster bisque, lobster ravioli, and deep-fried lobster dumplings. Lobster Thermidor is obtainable at a sit-down restaurant called The Black Pearl on Harbor Park’s northwest wharf. A large all-pine booth sponsored by the Maine Lobster Promotion Council has free pamphlets with recipes, eating tips, and Lobster Fun Facts. The winner of Friday’s Amateur Cooking Competition prepares Saffron Lobster Ramekins, the recipe for which is available for public downloading at www.mainelobsterfestival.com. There are lobster T-shirts and lobster bobblehead dolls and inflatable lobster pool toys and clamp-on lobster hats with big scarlet claws that wobble on springs. Your assigned correspondent saw it all, accompanied by one girlfriend and both his own parents—one of which parents was actually born and raised in Maine, albeit in the extreme northern inland part, which is potato country and a world away from the touristic midcoast. 2

For practical purposes, everyone knows what a lobster is. As usual, though, there’s much more to know than most of us care about—it’s all a matter of what your interests are. Taxonomically speaking, a lobster is a marine crustacean of the family Homaridae, characterized by five pairs of jointed legs, the first pair terminating in large pincerish claws used for subduing prey. Like many other species of benthic carnivore, lobsters are both hunters and scavengers. They have stalked eyes, gills on their legs, and antennae. There are dozens of different kinds worldwide, of which the relevant species here is the Maine lobster, Homarus americanus . The name “lobster” comes from the Old English loppestre , which is thought to be a corrupt form of the Latin word for locust combined with the Old English loppe , which meant spider.

Moreover, a crustacean is an aquatic arthropod of the class Crustacea, which comprises crabs, shrimp, barnacles, lobsters, and freshwater crayfish. All this is right there in the encyclopedia. And an arthropod is an invertebrate member of the phylum Arthropoda, which phylum covers insects, spiders, crustaceans, and centipedes/millipedes, all of whose main commonality, besides the absence of a centralized brain-spine assembly, is a chitinous exoskeleton composed of segments, to which appendages are articulated in pairs.

The point is that lobsters are basically giant sea-insects. 3 Like most arthropods, they date from the Jurassic period, biologically so much older than mammalia that they might as well be from another planet. And they are—particularly in their natural brown-green state, brandishing their claws like weapons and with thick antennae awhip—not nice to look at. And it’s true that they are garbagemen of the sea, eaters of dead stuff, 4 although they’ll also eat some live shellfish, certain kinds of injured fish, and sometimes each other.

Photograph By Clarita Berger / National Geographic Image Collection

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Consider The Lobster Summary, Analysis and Themes

“Consider the Lobster” is a famous essay by David Foster Wallace that originally appeared in Gourmet magazine. It centers on the Maine Lobster Festival, which prompts an exploration of the ethics of killing lobsters for human consumption.

Wallace dives deep into the lobster’s physiology and potential capacity for pain, questioning whether the pleasure we derive from eating them justifies the methods of preparation. The essay blends humor and philosophical inquiry, ultimately challenging readers to think critically about the food they eat and the ethical implications of their choices.

The essay begins with an evocative portrait of the bustling Maine Lobster Festival. However, the initial notes of culinary enthusiasm quickly give way to a complex meditation on the ethics of killing and eating these creatures.

Wallace delves into the history of lobster, outlining its curious shift from an undesirable food source to a luxurious treat. He explores the festival in detail, highlighting both its celebratory atmosphere and the unsettling realities concealed behind the veneer of fun and festivities.

The central question of the essay emerges: do lobsters feel pain, and if so, does that fundamentally alter the morality of consuming them? 

Wallace examines the common method of boiling a lobster alive and the creature’s undeniable struggle during the process. This leads to a consideration of the broader debate about animal suffering.

He introduces PETA’s protests against the festival, highlighting their arguments about lobster sentience. In turn, this prompts a scientific inquiry into the lobster’s nervous system and the nature of pain. 

Wallace explores the concept that lobsters might lack the complex brain structures necessary to experience pain the same way that humans do. While this idea initially offers some comfort, he soon dissects its problematic implications.

Should pain be measured solely by its emotional and intellectual complexity, or is the raw experience of physical distress enough to warrant ethical concern? 

Wallace wrestles with the lobster’s evident fight for survival, acknowledging that even if the animal’s pain is different from a human’s, it remains unsettlingly real.

He further challenges the reader by contrasting the Maine Lobster Festival’s giant, public lobster cooker with the intimate act of killing the creature in a home kitchen. The essay highlights the uncomfortable dissonance between the festive atmosphere of the event and the hidden, brutal truth of its culinary practices.

Wallace grapples with his own hypocrisy– an awareness of the moral complexities of eating animals, coupled with a continuing desire to consume meat. He questions the notion of “gourmet,” wondering if it merely refers to presentation and taste rather than the full ethical picture of the meal.

Ultimately, “Consider the Lobster” doesn’t provide neat answers. 

Instead, it forces readers to confront uncomfortable questions about the food they eat and the often overlooked ethical trade-offs embedded in their choices. 

Wallace’s introspective narrative style invites readers to follow him on this unsettling journey, questioning their own assumptions and the ease with which they may have previously ignored these difficult considerations.

The essay becomes an exercise in empathy, an invitation to extend compassion beyond the familiar boundaries of human experience. It is an exploration of the messy, unresolved contradictions that exist within most of us when confronted with the reality of causing suffering to satisfy our own appetites.

The Ethics of Consumption & Suffering

At its core, “Consider the Lobster” questions the morality of causing suffering to living creatures for our own pleasure. Wallace meticulously describes the process of cooking a lobster alive, forcing the reader to confront the uncomfortable reality behind a delicious meal. 

He challenges our automatic acceptance of practices that cause pain, simply because they bring us enjoyment. This theme extends outwards from the lobster, suggesting we re-examine our broader consumption habits, and whether those cause unnecessary suffering to other living beings.

The Illusion of Choice

Wallace questions whether we truly have free will in our food choices. He presents the Maine Lobster Festival as a microcosm of American society – a spectacle driven by tradition, advertising, and social pressure. 

The sheer availability of lobsters, the festive atmosphere, and cultural expectations all manipulate our choices, leading us to make decisions without fully considering their ethical consequences. Wallace implies that we often prioritize convenience and cultural norms over a truly conscious, moral evaluation of our actions.

The Complexity of Sentience

While the essay centers around the question of whether lobsters feel pain, Wallace expands the debate to the larger issue of what defines sentience and consciousness. He argues that our anthropocentric lens often prevents us from truly understanding the inner lives of other species. 

By acknowledging our limitations in this area, the themes of compassion and respect extend beyond creatures we easily relate to. Wallace forces us to grapple with the possibility that just because we don’t fully grasp a creature’s experience doesn’t justify causing it harm.

The Hypocrisy of Modern Life

Wallace subtly critiques the contradiction between our supposed values and our actions. He highlights how we celebrate the Maine Lobster Festival – a symbol of abundance – while simultaneously ignoring the realities of suffering involved in creating that feast. 

This contradiction, Wallace argues, reveals a profound disconnect in modern society, where we profess concern for animal welfare yet often turn a blind eye to the uncomfortable realities that make our lifestyles possible.

David Foster Wallace’s essay isn’t merely about crustaceans; it’s an unflinching interrogation of human morality within a consumerist society. By framing his inquiry around the Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace unveils a profound tension at the heart of our choices. 

On one hand, the festival presents itself as a celebration of community and tradition, a bounty of fresh seafood enjoyed by all. However, beneath this veneer, Wallace reveals the unsettling reality obscured for the convenience of our palates – the systematic infliction of suffering upon sentient creatures. 

This central juxtaposition – the juxtaposition between festive enjoyment and the hidden violence it rests upon – serves as the catalyst for a broader discussion on our ethical blind spots.

Wallace’s genius lies not in providing a neatly packaged moral verdict, but rather in meticulously deconstructing the complex layers surrounding the issue. He forces readers to confront the vivid, visceral process of a lobster meeting its end, prompting genuine discomfort that’s difficult to brush aside. 

Yet, Wallace doesn’t stop at the individual lobster. He skillfully shifts focus outwards, questioning the very systems that make such practices not only acceptable but also desirable. 

The abundance at the festival, the social pressure to participate, the carefully crafted marketing ; all of these elements contribute to a societal apparatus that manipulates individual choice and obscures true ethical consideration.

Furthermore, Wallace challenges our anthropocentric notions of sentience and suffering. 

He acknowledges the inherent limits of human understanding when it comes to the inner lives of other species, forcing us to confront the possibility that just because we don’t fully comprehend a creature’s experience doesn’t justify inflicting pain. 

This challenges our cultural habit of prioritizing humans over all else, hinting at the need for a more expansive and compassionate ethical framework.

Ultimately, “Consider the Lobster” leaves the reader with a lingering sense of unease. 

While not explicitly condemning the consumption of lobster, it unveils the hypocrisy we engage in to maintain our lifestyles. 

We profess to care about animal welfare, yet often participate in systems that cause profound harm, while carefully shielding ourselves from the uncomfortable truths behind them. 

Wallace’s essay serves as a mirror, reflecting back the disconnect between our stated values and our actions, forcing us to question what we truly stand for.

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"Consider the Lobster": A Summary

Laurie Nesbitt is proud Class of 2018 Terp from Howard County, Maryland. She is an Elementary Education major and holds membership to the CIVICUS Living and Learning program and UMD’s Equestrian Team. She would like to thank her English 101C instructor Kirk Greenwood for encouraging her to submit her essay to Interpolations and Scott Eklund and Norrell Edwards for their assistance in the editing process.

David Foster Wallace's 2004 article "Consider the Lobster," originally published in Gourmet magazine, investigates a topic not generally covered by such publications—the sensations of one of the animals who becomes our food. Wallace, an American essayist, novelist, and English professor, dubs himself as readers' "assigned correspondent" of the 56th Annual Maine Lobster Festival (236). Boasting 25,000 pounds of fresh-caught lobster, cooking competitions, carnival rides, live music, and a beauty pageant, the MLF draws 100,000 visitors from across the country (236). However, Wallace emphasizes that no amount of lobster paraphernalia and clever marketing strategies can divert him from the serious question, "Is it right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?" (243). In his article, Wallace seeks not to answer this query, but rather to provide thought-provoking information and allow readers to draw their own conclusions. For example, he calls attention to promotional material provided by the MLF which describes the lobster's nervous system as simple, decentralized, and lacking the structures which resist pain—an explanation which Wallace then rejects as "incorrect in about nine different ways" (245). Additionally, he points out that in truth lobsters do have nociceptors, which he describes as, "pain receptors sensitive to potentially damaging extremes of temperature," such as boiling water (250). To provide further illustration of the lobsters' consciousness, Wallace invokes the obvious "struggling, thrashing, and lid-clattering" which accompanies the lobsters' descent into the boiling kettle and adds that, according to most ethicists, this combination of neurological structures and behavior can be used to determine a creature's pain capacity (249, 248). Having worked through the complexities of the issue, Wallace returns to his original question: is it possible to truly defend the act of consuming flesh without acknowledging the act's inherent selfishness? Wallace leaves readers of Gourmet, which uses the catch phrase "The Magazine of Good Living," to ponder their own "ethical convictions" and reflect on the dichotomy between the MLF's celebratory façade and its "Roman-circus" tendencies (254, 253). In this manner, Wallace has set up his readers to reflect not just on the lobster but on the larger moral questions behind their carnivorous lifestyle.

Works Cited

Wallace, David F. "Consider the Lobster."  Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays . New York: Little, Brown, 2005. Print. 235-254.

Articles copyright © 2024 the original authors. No part of the contents of this Web journal may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission from the author or the Academic Writing Program of the University of Maryland. The views expressed in these essays do not represent the views of the Academic Writing Program or the University of Maryland.

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Consider the Lobster | Summary and Analysis

Summary of consider the lobster by david foster wallace.

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace is an article written in 2003 with an intention to review the 56th Maine Lobster Festival but was published in 2004 in the  Gourmet  Magazine. The prose meanders in its approach while reviewing the festival as it ventures to expose the ethical dilemma of eating a lobster that is cooked alive, appealing to the sense and feeling of the readers. 

David Foster Wallace was an American author and essayist renowned for his exceptionally innovative and descriptive writing skills that focussed on an individual’s experience in this world. His non-fiction works are self-conscious and reflexive at their best. 

Consider the Lobster | Summary

Consider the Lobster deals with the 56th Maine Lobster Festival that the author attends and attempts to review. A description of the events including concerts, pageants, parades, races, eating tents, etc., and the hype around follows. The author then ventures into the origins of the species and its name by drawing on information he accesses through encyclopedias. Lobsters have undergone a change in status- from a food belonging to lower classes to a posh delicacy now. Though the festival markets lobster as healthy, the dishes served at the festival seem far away from the notion of melting butter and chips. The freshness of the sea creatures renders them a relishing taste which primarily causes their boiling when alive and this is the crux of the article. Wallace is preoccupied with the uncomfortable and complex notion of lobsters being boiled alive only to be consumed by humans. He opens the gate to a discussion on the potential pain-bearing capacity of these animals which might be different from humans but does exist. Their inability to communicate their pain garners them an underprivileged status in the animal hierarchy. But the author borrows rational reasoning from his research on the subject to allow space for raising the issue to kill lobsters mercifully rather than as a blunt attack. He does not advocate the non-consumption of animals due to his own selfish interests but offers a different perspective on the practice of non-vegetarianism. The position he occupies is vague and confusing but he achieves success in his mission which is to light up the consciences of humans towards this issue and other malpractices they might be engaged in. 

Consider the Lobster | Analysis

For a comprehensive view, the essay shall be analyzed under various heads: 

Consider the Lobster |  Writing Style

The article opens with Wallace’s  factual reporting  of the Maine Lobster Festival, an annual celebration held every July and to which he was an attendee in the year of the article’s publication. Penned in the  first person  for the initial sections of the essay, Wallace adopts a  journalistic method  of describing the event in great detail to allow the readers an insight into the history of the festival and its purpose. The main attractions of the celebration are found in the  meticulous description  of the programs organized that reflects both the author’s research on the given topic as well as his observation while in attendance. But interestingly, the article in its final product turned out to be a more nuanced piece on the subject  incorporating an ethical stance on the consumption of lobsters  rather than just being limited to a review of the  culinary experience and aesthetics . It can also be noticed that Wallace often dives deep into his discussion while spilling some useful information that momentarily  digresses  him from his argument. However, after reading the essay in its entirety, we can deduce that it is a  strategic impulse  on the part of the author. It is intentional in nature  to gauge the readers’ attentiveness  and interest in his  moral inquiry.  The  lengthy footnotes  are also a gripping addition to his work which showcases his personal investment in this project and issue. 

Consider the Lobster |  Tone

Wallace’s attempt to bring forth an issue that had been under wraps or met the door of ignorance for a long is praiseworthy. He does not only highlight the issue of the wrongful act of cooking the lobsters alive for “gustatory” pleasure but also  investigates  the degree of its impact. Like an ethical person fulfilling his moral and social duty, he does raise an issue but 

at the same time refutes providing a solution to it. His dilemma suspends him between the need of feeling contended of rendering light to an issue which must be dawning on many consciences but at the same time wants to also feel satisfied that he can eat a lobster without any ethical hindrances. So in this regard, the tonality of the essay becomes  informative, appealing,  and sometimes  sarcastic  but all in the garb of an ambiguous stand. 

Consider the Lobster |  Key Arguments

Wallace opts to not follow the conventional style of essay writing but rather treats his work as a platform for exhibiting his in-depth knowledge and understanding of the sensitivity pertaining to the worldwide lobster eating practice in the particular and animal slaughter at a macro level. His aim  is to spark the fire of awareness in the readers , especially of the magazine  Gourmet,  about  the process of cooking a lobster  and  the inconsiderate position we as consumers   occupy while relishing  it. He  does not   question or antagonize non-vegetarianism . His larger purpose is  to ponder over the likeliness between lobsters and humans in their receptivity to pain . Who gives us the authority to kill animals mercilessly and consume them? Why a lobster is not considered equal to other animals such as house pets? He is not against the practice of cooking lobsters but encourages people to employ less hurtful techniques to kill them.   

Consider the Lobster |  Supportive statements

Wallace begins to explore the actual motive behind his article in the latter half of his work by throwing a thought-provoking question to the readers- “Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?” This concern hovers between sentimentality and an individual’s choice. One of Wallace’s rental car guys named Dick expounds on the pain-bearing capacity of lobsters which according to him is absent as “there’s a part of the brain in people and animals that lets us feel pain, and lobsters’ brains don’t have this part.” People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has been supporting the cause of prohibiting merciless lobster killing and cooking by banning such festivals which they believe is more than a matter of individual conscience. It is rather a spectacle as the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker awaits many spectators every year, rendering it a sadistic approach. 

Wallace continues by speculating on how animals feel pain and if it is righteous to inflict pain only to eat them. It is morally complex and overwhelming. “Pain is a totally subjective mental experience” and the fact that “even the most highly evolved nonhuman mammals can’t use language to communicate with us about their subjective mental experience is only the first layer of additional complication in trying to extend our reasoning about pain and morality to animals.” He is well aware of the intricacies of the subject he has chosen to study and debate which somehow entangles him as he moves further. 

The uncomfortable position he puts his readers in is scrutinizing as a direct accusation pertaining to boiling the lobsters alive by our own hands comes affront. He offers an alternate lens to view the quotidian activity of cooking a lobster for a delicious meal. He wishes to view the scenario from a lobster’s point of view and recognize its condition as our own if we would have been in its place- being boiled alive. By creating a thread of empathy, the author attacks the emotional chord of humans and compels them to prioritize the issue. 

Further, he borrows from the ethicists’ criteria of “determining whether a living creature has the capacity to suffer and so has genuine interests that it may or may not be our moral duty to consider.” One is the presence of “nociceptors, prostaglandins, neuronal opioid receptors, etc.” and the other is “whether the animal demonstrates behavior associated with pain.” Lobsters, as observed, pass both. They do have “nociceptors, as well as invertebrate versions of the prostaglandins and major neurotransmitters via which our own brains register pain.” They also have “an exquisite tactile sense, one facilitated by hundreds of thousands of tiny hairs…[which enables them] to receive stimuli and impressions.” Thus, they do experience pain but the absence of a system to handle the effect of the pain is absent in their bodies which proposes a comparatively comforting notion that the lack of endorphins ensures the “lobsters’ raw subjective experience of pain as something radically different which might not be addressed as pain, like “frontal lobotomy patients.” Also, the introduction of the theory of “preference” is revolutionary in this subject as Wallace ascribes the movements in boiling kettle as a preference of lobsters and not a reaction to the pain they might be experiencing. 

He concludes the article by delineating his intention of producing a descriptive take on the subject- to ensure that these “troubling questions that arise amid all the laughter and saltation and community pride of the Maine Lobster Festival” do find a platform for their voice. He appeals to the future generations’ possible view of our contemporary practices as that of “Nero’s entertainment” or equivalent to “Aztec sacrifices.” This far-fetched comparison is unruly as most people, including Wallace, believe in the lesser importance of animals in comparison to humans for their own selfish interests. To be able to continue eating them without any burden of moral guilt, humans have not devised any personal ethical system yet. 

Consider the Lobster | Critical Evaluation

Wallace incorporates his research from  various disciplines  spanning  history, geography, taxonomy, etymology, and social sciences  to prepare his article. The historical fact such as lobster’s status as a food for the lower classes in the 1800s to its social mobility in the contemporary era as a posh delicacy is amusing. The geographical specification of the location of the festival coupled with the etymology of the word “lobster” is also fascinating. Taxonomical classification of the lobsters and its encyclopedic zoological elucidation is exhausting yet educative. He first uses scientific jargon and occupies a major chunk of the space, only to later translate his point into simpler terms. Amidst the blast of information, a conscientious Wallace drops an even bigger bomb of ethical responsibility on the readers. Along with that, he also exposes the true nature of such festivals in their overcrowded atmosphere and unacceptable arrangements. He fails to understand such a notion of vacation and fun which involves long queues on sun-soaking days to taste the “local flavor.” The blunt unmasking of the true status of a tourist as “economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing” is eye-opening. 

Nonetheless, the author is confused at his best. He cajoles the readers to reflect on the moral and sensitive aspect of cooking the lobsters alive without producing his own firm stand on it. He maintains a balance that mirrors a human being’s true dilemma and desire to be on two boats at the same time by not displeasing either side. In the end, he defends his piece tactfully by calling out to the readers of the magazine for their responsibility over the issue- “After all, isn’t being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one’s food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet? Or is all the gourmet’s extra attention and sensibility just supposed to be aesthetic, gustatory?” With logic (logos), emotions (pathos), and credible sources (ethos), he successfully drives his concern. 

To conclude, the article is an exposition of the killing instincts humans possess in their ambition to survive in the cut-throat world which not only targets animals as a means of dietary consumption but also has and continues to prey on even other humans who are always thirsty for each other’s blood. If the spectacle of lobsters being cooked alive in the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker could not evoke empathy in humans up until the release of this article, we can very well imagine the ignorant response to Jews being gassed alive in the chambers and concentration camps during the holocaust until it became a pressing issue! 

Consider the Lobster |  Literary Devices

“Chitinous arthropods grow by molting, rather the way the people have to buy bigger clothes as they age and gain weight.” 

“And they [lobsters] are— particularly in their natural brown-green state, brandishing their  claws like weapons  and with thick antennae a whip— not nice to look at.” 

The lobster “will sometimes try to cling to the container’s sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rim  like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof .” 

“The “MLF can begin to take on aspects of something  like a Roman circus  or  medieval torture-fest .” 

Lobsters are “ garbagemen of the sea , eaters of dead stuff.” 

The consultant expresses his view on his tourist experience at the festival where “you have to line up for an ungodly long time to get your lobsters, and meanwhile there are all these ex-flower children coming up and down along the line-handing out pamphlets that say the lobsters die in terrible pain and you shouldn’t eat them.” 

In the 1800s, “ lobster was literally low-class food , eaten only by the poor and institutionalized.” But “ Now, of course, lobster is posh, a delicacy , only a step or two down from a caviar.” 

“Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover  rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off . Or the  creature’s claws scraping the sides  of the kettle as it thrashes around. The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you and I  would behave if we were plunged into boiling water  (with the obvious exception of  screaming ).” 

“Is it not possible that future generations will regard our own present agribusiness and eating practices in much the same way as we now view  Nero’s entertainments  or  Aztec sacrifices ?” 

Nero was a popular Roman Emperor and Aztecs were an ethnic group from Central Mexico. 

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Consider The Lobster

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Analysis: “Consider the Lobster”

David Foster Wallace’s style is pivotal toward understanding a complex and at times jumbled text. “Consider the Lobster” contains several footnotes, a text feature commonly employed by Wallace, which complicate and expand his argument. These footnotes offer exposition such as why he was speaking to a rental car liaison, clarify details such as the nature of the debate between human and animal life versus culinary taste and animal life, and give tangential thoughts such as what it means to be a tourist in America. These footnotes inform the reader’s understanding of Wallace’s argument, which is notable for lacking a central claim or thesis; rather, Wallace raises questions for the reader to consider.

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Why's This So Good?

August 1, 2017, why's this so good david foster wallace and the brilliant "consider the lobster", take a moment to bask in the splendor of the piece that maddened many gourmet readers in 2004.

By Ryan Marnane

Tagged with

What does a lobster feel when it's dropped into a pot of boiling water? And should we care? Such are the questions David Foster Wallace asks in "Consider the Lobster." Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press

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.

On a Wednesday morning in late July 2003, David Foster Wallace made his way to the “the enormous, pungent, and extremely well-marketed Maine Lobster Festival” held every year in the state’s midcoast region. Wallace, “your assigned correspondent…accompanied by one girlfriend and both his own parents,” had been sent there by Gourmet, “the Magazine of Good Living,” whose bon vivant of a readership no doubt anticipated a freewheeling, lighthearted tour of the festival’s gustatory pleasures of August in Maine, perhaps accompanied by a recipe or two.

Meanwhile, the narrative’s temperature steadily increases to a boil, and readers are unable to think or claw their way out.

And for a while, at least, Wallace — keeping true to his own words that a “good opener, first and foremost, fails to repel” — maintains an amiable demeanor with his readers, displaying mastery of his subject material with a tongue-in-cheek transparency to the research process itself: “All this is right there in the encyclopedia.” From historical insights (“some colonies had laws against feeding lobsters to inmates more than once a week because it was thought to be cruel and unusual, like making people eat rats”) to taxonomy and etymology (“a lobster is a marine crustacean of the family Homaridae….the name ‘lobster’ comes from the Old English loppestre, which is thought to be a corrupt form of the Latin word for locust combined with the Old English loppe, which meant spider”), Wallace peppers opening sections with his unique brand of witty self-consciousness in tandem with humorous sketches surrounding U.S. tourism at large (and public gorging festivals in particular):

I confess that I have never understood why so many people’s idea of a fun vacation is to don flip-flops and sunglasses and crawl through maddening traffic to loud hot crowded tourist venues in order to sample a “local flavor” that is by definition ruined by the presence of tourists …  watching people slap canal-zone mosquitoes as they eat deep-fried Twinkies and watch Professor Paddywhack, on six-foot stilts in a raincoat with plastic lobsters protruding from all directions on springs, terrify their children.

After building this rapport with readers of Gourmet, Wallace—just shy of the article’s halfway point—casually drops a line that, in retrospect, appears as a crustacean version of Chekhov’s edict about never placing a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off: “A detail so obvious that most recipes don’t even bother to mention it is that each lobster is supposed to be alive when you put it in the kettle.”

Shortly thereafter and seemingly without warning, readers are plunged into the coup de grace of rhetorical questions that will solicit a record-breaking number of responses from readers:

So then here is a question that’s all but unavoidable at the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, and may arise in kitchens across the U.S.: Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? A related set of concerns: Is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental? What does “all right” even mean in this context? Is it all just a matter of individual choice?

Another alternative is to put the lobster in cold salt water and then very slowly bring it up to a full boil. Cooks who advocate this method are going mostly on the analogy to a frog, which can supposedly be kept from jumping out of a boiling pot by heating the water incrementally. In order to save a lot of research-summarizing, I’ll simply assure you that the analogy between frogs and lobsters turns out not to hold.

There’s nevertheless a useful correlation between the frog parable and thinking about the structure of Wallace’s career-long engagement within the literary journalistic tradition: He begins slowly, almost tepidly, with his readers, gracefully careening them through a seemingly innocuous narrative about “one of the best food-themed festivals in the world.” Meanwhile, unbeknownst to gourmands and frogs alike, the narrative’s temperature steadily increases to a boil, and readers are unable to think or claw their way out of questioning the varying gradations of consciousness and the responsibilities and subsequent difficulties of living a thoughtful, conscientious existence. As Karen Kaplan of Huntington, New York, writes:

I imagined feeling the way a lobster feels after being plunged into a pot of boiling water. I certainly felt like I was rattling and clanking on the lid of the pot trying to escape. But in reality, I was just trying to finish this painfully long and footnoted-ridden article.

Wallace hooks readers like Kaplan into taking the plunge with him, so to speak, with not only his deployment of humor and the above parable-ish type rhetorical device but does so in tandem with implying that the stakes and scope of the article’s thesis remain uniquely suited for the very readers of the very commissioning magazine itself: “After all,” Wallace writes, “isn’t being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one’s food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet?”

And many readers did love the piece. Eric Henderson of Morgantown, West Virginia, found it “the most entertaining, well-written, and honest articles I’ve encountered in a magazine in the past decade,” while Charles Warner of Memphis thought its description of the standard American tourist “should be emblazoned above the exit portal at every international airport.” But then there’s Eileen O’Farrell of Healdsburg, California: “Your author, whose writing I find tiresome and somewhat infantile with his footnotes or information he couldn’t figure out how to include otherwise, admits he lacks ‘culinary sophistication’ and ‘is confused.’ He has obviously been taken in by the protestors. Please find writers who enjoy their job, their travels, other travels, and food!”

O’Farrell’s opinion notwithstanding, “Consider the Lobster” was included in Robert Atwan’s 2005 “Best American Essays” series, guest-edited by Susan Orlean. In the collection’s introductory remarks, Orlean considers her own criteria for selecting essays: “Many of the essays that intrigued me this year were funny, or unusually structured, or tonally adventurous…. What mattered most,” Orlean writes, “was that they conveyed the writer’s journey, and did it intelligently, gracefully, honestly, and with whatever voice or shape fit best.” E.g.,

I’m not trying to give you a PETA-like screed here—at least I don’t think so. I’m trying, rather, to work out and articulate some of the troubling questions that arise amid all the laughter and saltation and community pride of the Maine Lobster Festival. The truth is that if you, the Festival attendee, permit yourself to think that lobsters can suffer and would rather not, the MLF can begin to take on aspects of something like a Roman circus or medieval torture-fest.

Wallace’s voice is, to use Orlean’s phrase, tonally adventurous throughout, a contagious bewilderment from Wallace in unceasing conversation with readers of Gourmet, never quite letting them forget that they’re part and parcel to his own thinking about the various “questions of whether and how different kinds of animals feel pain”:

As far as I can tell, my own main way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking about the whole unpleasant thing. I should add that it appears to me unlikely that many readers of gourmet wish to think hard about it, either, or to be queried about the morality of their eating habits in the pages of a culinary monthly. Since, however, the assigned subject of this article is what it was like to attend the 2003 MLF, and thus to spend several days in the midst of a great mass of Americans all eating lobster, and thus to be more or less impelled to think hard about lobster and the experience of buying and eating lobster, it turns out that there is no honest way to avoid certain moral questions.

Wallace, self-admittingly lacking both culinary sophistication and comprehensive understanding in mass tourism’s supposed appeal, nevertheless remained earnest in his quest to explore and question “whether the reader can identify with any of [his own] reactions and acknowledgments and discomforts” surrounding “the whole morality-of-boiling-lobsters-alive issue.” I suppose it’s safe to say that Wallace, in the end, was correct after all: “There are limits to what even interested persons can ask of each other.”

[1] All reader response quotes come from Gourmet’s October 2004 “Letters to the Editor” section.

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Consider the Lobster

And Other Essays

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By David Foster Wallace

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David Foster Wallace

About the author.

David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1962 and raised in Illinois, where he was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He received bachelor of arts degrees in philosophy and English from Amherst College and wrote what would become his first novel, The Broom of the System , as his senior English thesis. He received a masters of fine arts from University of Arizona in 1987 and briefly pursued graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University. His second novel, Infinite Jest , was published in 1996. Wallace taught creative writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College, and published the story collections Girl with Curious Hair , Brief Interviews with Hideous Men , Oblivion, the essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, and Consider the Lobster . He was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers’ Award, and was appointed to the Usage Panel for The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. He died in 2008. His last novel, The Pale King , was published in 2011.

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David Foster Wallace: Consider The Lobster: And Other Essays

The title Consider The Lobster is more a demand than an invitation: You must consider the lobster. Or, rather, you must know that there's a lot more to consider about the lobster than you'd expect. David Foster Wallace considers the lobster—or, more specifically, the 2004 Maine Lobster Festival—in the title piece of this 10-essay collection, and finds it a fine jumping-off point for a discussion of whether animals feel pain, and whether this should influence how we think about the ethics of eating them in the first place. And, hey, what is pain anyway, really? Wallace devotes plenty of words to the main event, but as always, he puts as much action in the footnotes.

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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays Hardcover – December 13, 2005

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• Print length 352 pages
• Language English
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• Publication date December 13, 2005
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• ISBN-10 0316156116
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Little, Brown and Company; First Edition (December 13, 2005)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316156116
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316156110
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.88 x 9.25 inches
• #669 in American Fiction Anthologies
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• #12,738 in Philosophy (Books)

About the author

David foster wallace.

David Foster Wallace wrote the acclaimed novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System and the story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and Girl With Curious Hair. His nonfiction includes the essay collections Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and the full-length work Everything and More.  He died in 2008.

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Red Lobster's bankruptcy mess is reminiscent of an Iowa problem

Lanon baccam’s leadership and integrity make him the right choice.

As the campaign for Congress gains momentum, Lanon Baccam emerges as a beacon of hope for progress and a brighter future.

With a proven track record of dedication to public service, Lanon Baccam embodies the values and principles that will lead our nation forward. Baccam is a military veteran who served eight years in the U.S. Army and Iowa National Guard and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2004. He has never forgotten his fellow veterans and has dedicated his life to helping them.

Throughout his career, Baccam has shown an unwavering commitment to addressing the pressing issues facing our communities. Following his service in the military, heserved in the United States Department of Agriculture under former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack. There, he worked to support veterans, expand pathways to jobs in the agriculture industry and promote training and entrepreneurship opportunities for veterans transitioning to careers in agriculture.

Baccam's leadership, integrity, and dedication make him the clear choice for Congress. I urge voters in the 3rd Congressional District to join me in supporting Lanon Baccam in the upcoming Democratic primary to be held June 4. Together, we can build a brighter future for all Iowans.

Mitch Henry, chair, Iowa Unity Coalition

Randy Feenstra’s record stands out

Congressman Randy Feenstra of Iowa’s 4th District is the most hard-working, high-achieving representative we’ve had in northwest Iowa since Fred Grandy. He’s been doing a double “full Grassley,” introduced and saw the passing of a number of legislative acts in Washington but remains the everyday Iowan he’s been for his 55 years living in Sioux County.

I do not agree with him all the time, but I never doubt his work ethic, his educational background or his integrity. Iowans have been fortunate to have had a number of hardworking elected officials from both parties to represent us in Washington. As a businessman, parent and husband and educator, he epitomizes whom we like to represent Iowa. As parent of a current Navy lieutenant commander and a veteran myself, I set high standards for whom I vote for. Feenstra exceeds those standards!

Gerald Edgar, Garner

Virgil is better than Feenstra on Ukraine, pipeline

Conservative estimates reveal well over 500,000 people have been killed or injured in just over two years fighting in Ukraine’s war with Russia. Much of Ukraine’s infrastructure and many cities have been devastated. Congress has approved funding for roughly $170 billion in taxpayer dollars to prolong the war and prop up that non-NATO country, despite the opposition of a majority of voters.

Most experts consider the war already lost, yet all four House of Representatives members from Iowa (Randy Feenstra, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Ashley Hinson, Zach Nunn) and both Iowa senators (Joni Ernst, Chuck Grassley) still support continued funding for that lost cause.

The only logical explanation is that our congressional representatives care more about military industrial complex donors who can extend their political livelihood than they do about the desires of their constituents.

Truth be told, NATO is the aggressor here. In 1990, the US promised Mikhail Gorbachev “not one inch eastward” beyond East Germany regarding NATO expansion. Since then, 15 more European countries have been absorbed into NATO. Putin doesn’t want to conquer Europe, he wants a buffer between NATO and his country, as any honest historian will tell you. In the words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Time for 4th District voters to take a good look at an honorable alternative, Kevin Virgil, who opposes funding the lost war in Ukraine, (and also opposes the CO2 pipeline).

Thomas Plendl, Kingsley

Red Lobster mess is reminiscent of an Iowa problem

Several recent news items seem unrelated but have a common foundation, corporate greed.

Red Lobster, in business since 1968, has filed for bankruptcy . While the company’s decline has been attributed to the pandemic, inflation, and poor management (including the $20 “endless shrimp” promotion), a major root cause goes back 10 years. In 2014, Red Lobster was sold for $2.1 billion to a private equity firm, which quickly spun off the land on which the restaurants were located to a sister corporation. The landowners soon increased the lot rents to absorb almost 50% of Red Lobster’s annual earnings.

This scheme will sound very familiar to residents of manufactured home parks in Iowa. Out-of-state investors have been buying up these parks only to raise the lot rents, often 30% to 70%, on captive homeowners.

Although the pandemic is no longer a major economic factor and inflation is coming under control, the cost of many everyday items has remained high. Walmart, Target, Aldi, IKEA, H&M, and Michaels, among others, recently announced that they are planning to lower prices on thousands of items while still expecting to be profitable. Why have prices been so high for so long? Answer: price gouging.

Let’s put the blame for high prices where much of it belongs – not on political leaders, but on rich, out-of-state, money-hungry corporate executives and investors who don’t care at all about the cost of living, about affordable housing, or about the price of a shrimp dinner in Iowa.

Thomas Cook, Iowa City

Bill Walton showed the power of being positive

In the sports world, we lost a legend with Bill Walton passing away . For those not familiar, he was arguably one of the best college basketball players of all time, had a Hall of Fame NBA career and had a more impressive broadcasting career. His positive attitude throughout life was something that needs to be celebrated. At UCLA he was fighting for equal rights and was arrested for his position of lifting people up and treating them like equal people. Walton tried to focus on positive vibration that could make the world a better place. In a world where a vast amount of people focus on the negative, he was a shining example of the impact focusing on the positive can have in the world.

David Frost, Des Moines

Lowering taxes has consequences for the public

Tyler Raygor, in his Your Turn essay on May 26 , should understand that the future he forecasts because of Iowa Republicans isn't all for the better. The Legislature's order that counties reduce rural assessments means cutbacks. Here in Kossuth County, those cutbacks resulted in a drastic reduction in county support for our public libraries. Several of the smaller libraries will have no alternative but to close if these cuts remain.

Republicans at all levels are constantly harping on how one of their main goals is to cut taxes. What they fail to say is that cuts in taxes invariably result in cuts to services. The forced closing of rural libraries is not exactly my idea of "forging a better future" for our rural communities.

Don C. Yager, Fenton

Samuel Alito fails the integrity test

Personal integrity is basic to democracy. Abraham Lincoln profoundly defined democracy as a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Integrity is an individual’s responsibility. My words, demeanor, and displays are my responsibility to self and democracy. Nobody’s perfect, but lack of perfection is not an excuse for shirking accountability.

Justice Samuel Alito’s recent justifications for his yard display cheapened his integrity. Sitting on the highest court of the land requires utmost integrity. Justices’ decisions are key to trust in our judicial system. Democracy needs justices’ utmost uprightness in supporting our constitution. Alito’s allowing our flag displayed upside down on his property was certainly a personal responsibility.

Most troubling is Alito’s shirking his accountability. It is disappointing, disheartening, and concerning that Alito cowardly shifted fault to his wife, and further deferred his wife’s culpability to their neighbor for a sign not on Alito’s property.

Were we not taught as children: “Two wrongs never make a right.”? It is disturbing when any citizen chooses to display profanities or demeaning signs on their properties. However, the biggest reflection of those presentations attacks not the subject of the spectacle, but the integrity of the exhibitor.

Delores Reinhart, Williamsburg

Why didn’t inflation bring more funding to public schools?

According to Republicans in the Iowa Legislature, it's fine for private schools receiving millions of our tax dollars to raise their tuition by over 20% because of their increased expenses and inflation, but they give our public schools a 2.5% increase and expect them to survive.

Public schools accept all our kids. Private schools choose which students they want. Public schools are micromanaged in how they spend their money and what they teach and what books they are allowed have and how they interact with kids. Private schools have none of those rules. They just get money. The disrespect of our public schools and teachers and parents by Republican leadership continues.

A better option would be to fully fund our public schools. Give them the money to have enrichment programs and activities that benefit all our kids. Make all of our Iowa public schools into world-class schools and thus Iowa a destination for families on the move.

JoAnn Hardy, Mason City

International court correctly identifies Israel’s excesses

I am troubled by our government's reaction to the actions of the International Court of Justice bringing charges in regard to Israel's clear violation of international law, morality and dignity in regard to the way Israel is destroying Palestine.

People ask, what is Israel to do in order to stop a terrorist organization whose combatants hide among civilians? Ask the British about Northern Ireland, which had terrorists who killed the queen's cousin and bombed the Conservative Party's national convention.  Ask the Spanish about the Basque separatists who killed members of the Spanish government and terror-bombed civilians. Neither Spain nor Britain found it necessary to have military airplanes bomb Basque schools or Catholic neighborhoods in Belfast, and while neither Spain nor Britain can be praised for what they actually did, they were both orders of magnitude restrained compared with the way Israel acts in Gaza.

Oh, yes, more importantly, the radical IRA and Basque separatists are gone. They are gone not because the British and Spaniards have such good militaries, but because both countries realized there were underlying problems terrorists were able to exploit to recruit members. Israel, and our support for it, continues policies which make the underlying problems Hamas uses to recruit even worse.

What Israel is doing is an international crime, and American denial does not make it all right.  But it is more than a crime; it is a policy doomed to continued failure and destruction. The policy will bring decades more death. We should be supporting the International Court.

Ivan T. Webber, West Des Moines

An open letter to Hy-Vee

I have lived in Iowa for all but seven of my 70-plus years. I raised my family in Cedar Rapids, and I shopped exclusively at Hy-Vee. Until now. If you abandon the people of Wellington Heights in Cedar Rapids and similar neighborhoods in other Iowa communities, I will never shop at a Hy-Vee store again.

I am a retired marketing professor. I understand market positioning very well. Over the past decades Hy-Vee has done a brilliant job of positioning itself as more than a business. Hy-Vee has turned itself into a neighbor. When I was a child in Maxwell, Iowa I would hear the “helpful smile” jingle during the 10 news as I was settling down to sleep. I remember following my mother through Hy-Vee stores in Ankeny and Des Moines in a mortifying duckling parade with my four brothers and sisters. I raised my sons on food from Hy-Vee. I have been touched by Hy-Vee’s efforts to provide employment to our intellectually challenged neighbors. More recently, I was impressed by Hy-Vee’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Your employee/owners bent over backward to meet the extraordinary needs of the Iowans who had come to depend on them. In the process, over the years Hy-Vee has earned and enjoyed a high level of brand loyalty.

What you are doing now is not Hy-Vee. It is not Iowa. It is a repudiation of the position Hy-Vee has staked out for as long as I can remember. You are turning your backs on lower-income Iowans and creating food deserts in the largest cities in the state.

It would be consistent with Hy-Vee’s “helpful smile” market position if you were to reverse the decision to close these stores and, instead, pledge to find ways to better meet the needs of the Iowans who live in those neighborhoods. It would be consistent with what Iowans have been told to expect of you.

You would also, once again, have my business.

Mary Huneke, Cedar Rapids

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Want to Better Understand America? Consider All-You-Can-Eat Shrimp.

By Peter Coy

Opinion Writer

The great economist George Stigler wrote a paper called “The Cost of Subsistence” that calculated the minimum cost of food that would satisfy the nutritional requirements of “an active economist” who “lives in a large city.”

He calculated the nutritional value of 77 foods, including yummy ones like chocolate, strawberry preserves, bananas and leg of lamb, but concluded that they were all too expensive. In his article for a 1945 issue of The Journal of Farm Economics, he settled on just five foods based on their August 1939 prices, in these quantities per year: 370 pounds of wheat flour, 57 cans of evaporated milk, 111 pounds of cabbage, 23 pounds of spinach and 285 pounds of dried navy beans.

Stigler hastened to say that this was purely an academic exercise, not a diet recommendation. “It would be the height of absurdity to practice extreme economy at the dinner table in order to have an excess of housing or recreation or leisure,” he wrote.

Still, I thought of the Stigler diet this week when the news came out that Red Lobster, the seafood restaurant chain, had cracked under pressure and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. One source of its problems — not the biggest, but the easiest for customers to grasp — was an every-day-all-you-can-eat shrimp promotion last year that got too popular and was a key reason for an $11 million quarterly operating loss.

The connection, of course, is that Red Lobster’s offer was taken advantage of by diners who thought like Stigler. Once they paid $20 for the special (later bumped to $22 and then $25), the marginal cost of every shrimp they popped into their mouths was zero. That probably attracted some economizing types who weren’t even regular customers of Red Lobster.

I’m going to speculate a bit here. I wonder if changes in the economy and society have made people more prone to exploiting all-you-can-eat deals to the max. Trust in big business is the lowest on record, according to Gallup polling . So diners may feel less compunction about taking advantage of a big business’s marketing slip-up. At the same time, people are feeling economically stressed, so “free” is even more enticing than usual.

On Reddit, one anonymous poster wrote that “it’s almost impossible to find a deal for any and all things,” so when there is a good deal, “People are gonna hammer you on the thing because we are all desperate for value right now.”

I realize that’s just one person, but it rings true. Red Lobster “should have known this was coming,” John Gordon, a San Diego-based restaurant consultant, told me.

All-you-can-eat offers press all the wrong buttons. Some diners eat more than they really want, figuring they need to earn back the cost of the special. (That’s the sunk cost fallacy.) People watching them are either revolted or tempted to join in so they don’t feel as if they’re indirectly subsidizing the glutton.

The worst type of diner for a restaurant with an all-you-can-eat offer is the performative type, usually accompanied by someone with a camera, who will eat to bursting out of some combination of showmanship and defiance.

“Publicity around a specific all-you-can-eat event is going to pull out of the woodwork those who enjoy eating large amounts and demonstrating that they have this ability,” David Just, a behavioral economist at Cornell’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, told me. “You’re sort of putting this target on yourself.”

There’s a bigger group of people — call them Stiglerites — who are simply responding rationally to the change in incentives. “My perception from unit visits to Red Lobster is that they are typically older customers,” Gordon said. “I don’t know that they harbor ill will toward Red Lobster, but when they see a deal they would tend to vote with their feet and run toward.”

Buffet-style restaurants confront this problem all the time, so they have strategies for dealing with it. The self-serve feature saves them money on labor, compensating for the occasional overeater. They seek customers who choose buffet restaurants because they can sample lots of different foods and get firsts and seconds without waiting for a waiter or waitress. These ideal customers appreciate the low prices, but don’t see any reason to gorge themselves. The buffets put cheap, filling foods such as mac and cheese up front. They use small plates. They may be a bit slow to restock the more expensive items.

Buffet restaurants were shut down or shunned during the pandemic because of fears of disease transmission, and have only partly recovered their lost volumes since, according to data compiled by Statista . What they continue to have going for them is a low price per pound of food, which is a big selling point at the moment. Diners have been switching to cheaper types of restaurants, Andy Smith, the chief marketing officer of Dallas-based Black Box Intelligence, told me.

What buffet chains don’t do is make “free” the key selling point. Red Lobster made precisely that mistake. One promotion even said , “Insider tip: Avoid grabbing the extra biscuit to leave room for endless amounts of shrimp.”

I’m not a huge fan of shrimp, but if I’m trying to fill my stomach cheaply, I’ll take platefuls of shrimp over 285 pounds of dried navy beans.

The Readers Write

You wrote about Mary Kay Henry’s “Fight for $15 and a Union.” Try living on $15 an hour, even assuming that your employer hires you for a full 40-hour week!

John Porter Stouffville, Ontario, Canada

Regarding your newsletter on artificial intelligence in education: Models make wonderful servants, yet terrible masters, and warrant a healthy dose of skepticism.

Arun Sarna Alexandria, Va.

Quote of the Day

“Caged back of iron grilles and ninety-ton doors the golden American canary sings in Lorenzo’s limestone palace.”

— Al Lee, “The Federal Reserve Bank of New York” (1971)

Peter Coy is a writer for the Opinion section of The Times, covering economics and business. Email him at [email protected] . @ petercoy

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Elektrostal

Elektrostal Localisation : Country Russia , Oblast Moscow Oblast . Available Information : Geographical coordinates , Population, Area, Altitude, Weather and Hotel . Nearby cities and villages : Noginsk , Pavlovsky Posad and Staraya Kupavna .

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Time in Elektrostal , Moscow Oblast, Russia now

• Tokyo 06:20AM
• Beijing 05:20AM
• Kyiv 12:20AM
• Paris 11:20PM
• London 10:20PM
• New York 05:20PM
• Los Angeles 02:20PM

Time zone info for Elektrostal

• The time in Elektrostal is 8 hours ahead of the time in New York when New York is on standard time, and 7 hours ahead of the time in New York when New York is on daylight saving time.
• Elektrostal does not change between summer time and winter time.
• The IANA time zone identifier for Elektrostal is Europe/Moscow.

Time difference from Elektrostal

Sunrise, sunset, day length and solar time for elektrostal.

• Sunrise: 03:46AM
• Sunset: 09:02PM
• Day length: 17h 16m
• Solar noon: 12:24PM
• The current local time in Elektrostal is 24 minutes ahead of apparent solar time.

Elektrostal on the map

• Location: Moscow Oblast, Russia
• Latitude: 55.79. Longitude: 38.46
• Population: 144,000

Best restaurants in Elektrostal

• #1 Tolsty medved - Steakhouses food
• #2 Ermitazh - European and japanese food
• #3 Pechka - European and french food

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• Best business lunch restaurants in Elektrostal
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