A varied tour through DFW's journalism - more or less, this being DFW some of it is more journalistic than others, for example the description of John McCain's campaign trail in "Up, Simba!" which, yes, admittedly he is no Hunter S Thompson nor would wish to be; and "Big Red Son" in which he and A.N. other writer go to the pornography awards (and he gets the name of Annabel Chong, wrong, for some reason) are definitely reportage even if HST-like he embellishes and in his case adds to the text for book publication (and why not? a magazine is one thing, a book is another). The title article "Consider the Lobster" allows him to confront the paradox inherrent in such an event as a lobster festival - in order to participate it is necessary to kill, and kill slowly, thousands of creatures. As he says, in the phrase 'good eating', what do we mean by good? - and at the same time admits that he does eat meat, and enjoys it.
Meanwhile "The View from Mrs Thompson's" has to be a personal account, of something that in the U.S. almost defies personal accounts - the events of 11 September 2001.
"Authority and American Usage" is a book review, but what a book review. In it he takes to task the whole of the way that English is used nowadays and addresses the question of whether it is permissible to have an 'official' form of the language - DFW himself, and he admits it here, got into a heap of trouble for insisting to African-American students that, for their own good, they learn to write and speak 'official' American English.
If I have a quibble it is with the back cover blurb - the book is described as a 'hilarious new collection of essays'. Now DFW is known to have been at times a funny writer - few authors are as good at making you reach for the dictionary one moment and for a box of tissues (because you're laughing so much you cry) the next, and indeed he believed along with Wittgenstein (and Robert Anton Wilson and Zen Buddhists) that jokes can be a carrier system for truth and wisdom. But expecting only humour is to be let down when you find something else in its place. Pigeonholing him as 'a humorous writer' is a disservice. He had a huge appetite for knowledge, wrote down everything he knew but also a strong belief that the purpose of fiction was to write about what it's like to be human.


[for example, the anthology "The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases " edited by Jeff Vandermeer and Mark Roberts was badly reviewed in some quarters because not all the stories were funny. They weren't all meant to be.]
** often in footnotes so as not to disturb the flow of the narrative