Eccentric Flower:201007/Consider the Lobster

1.

Some years ago, the overrated dead novelist David Foster Wallace, who was not dead at the time but was already well past overrated*, was asked to write a piece on the Maine Lobster Festival for the late lamented Gourmet magazine. Wallace being Wallace, he jumped the rails and turned in a meandering, pedantic, self-congratulatorily erudite, windbaggish, footnoted exegesis** - in short, a typical Wallace piece - which, apparently, had almost nothing to do with what he had been asked to write about. If I had tried to submit such a piece to a well-regarded national magazine of high standards, I would be laughed out of court. However, Wallace being Wallace, they published it anyway. I take some joy in assuming they regretted their decision, because the piece (which has the same name as this entry, should you go looking for it) turned out to be perhaps the most controversial article Gourmet ever published. I believe it was still getting angry letters a year later.

Many of the letters were, hearteningly, from readers who did not have apartments in the Elevated Lofts of Littrachuah and therefore saw right through Wallace, and were appalled that Gourmet would stoop to publish such stuff. Many more of the letters were, dishearteningly, from readers who had fallen for Wallace's trick and had gotten entangled enough in the straw man of the article that they missed what a huge slice of wind it was.

The straw man in question was the matter of killing a lobster for consumption in one's own home - the morality of it, the alleged difficulties the act may pose to a creature of higher reasoning. All of which is a crock of shit.

I have just been re-reading one of the old Time-Life "Foods of the World" books, the one on New England cooking, written by a born-and-bred Cape Codder, Jonathan Norton Leonard. I cannot improve on his brief dismissal of issues with killing a lobster:

In fact lobsters are vicious, mean-tempered bottom-feeders which eat anything they can manage to dismember, who have to hide from their fellow lobsters when they molt if they want to survive, who will fight each other on the slightest pretext. ("He must have lost a fight with another lobster, sir." "Well, take it back and bring me the winner.") If three lobsters are caught in the same trap and left there for any length of time, the lobsterman will likely pull up the trap and find only the biggest or meanest one, surrounded by pieces of empty carapace of the other two.

Lobsters are bugs. They have the nervous systems of bugs - all hardwired, no free thought, no intellect per se. They are the cockroaches of the sea. It gives me wry amusement that some of the same people who could work themselves into fits over boiling this ocean insect alive would have utterly no qualms at crushing any number of their terrestrial cousins beneath their shoes. It clearly must be a matter of some undeserved mystique (I find lobster meat one of the most overrated delicacies in the world). If we managed to breed a cockroach the size of a lobster and its meat turned out to be bland but tasty, as the lobster's is, we would never be able to serve boiled Land Lobster intact in its shell at the table - people would run screaming. Yet most of us can stare at a brightly red-cooked, but definitely insectoid lobster on our plate without fidgets. This strikes me as a triumph of public relations and nothing more.

So it disappoints me that so many people seemed to get caught up in the debate about killing lobsters - and I don't mean the ones for whom killing any living non-vegetable thing is equally abhorrent; at least those latter folk are consistent. Now, I grant there is some latitude for discussion of the best way to kill a lobster, the quickest and least cruel. But hand-wringing over whether one's moral character can stand killing a lobster for one's own consumption at all? The people who argued that point (including Wallace) all needed to be asked when the last time was they stepped on a bug. None of them appeared to be Jainists to me from contextual clues.

* My wife insists that I note here that I have never actually read any long-form works by Wallace. This is true. I have, however, tried to read Infinite Jest on at least four occasions, and each time I stop some short distance in and remind myself that apparently being part of the intelligentsia is no guarantee that you are immune to being hoodwinked.

** The words "exegesis," "erudite," and "hoodwinked" are here to demonstrate that I can write as pompously and aimlessly as Wallace any time I like. Normally I consider this a sign that I'm not trying hard enough and/or really should have gotten someone to edit my work, whereas for some odd reason in Wallace's work it is considered a sign of brilliance. Those of us who are capable of making words do our absolute bidding at all times and know how lazy it is just to toss around polysyllables like a mixed metaphor salad see the missed catches in the other juggler's act with absolute clarity, and we get annoyed when others can't see the sham for what it is. Remember, if writing crap like this paragraph were actually difficult or challenging, I likely wouldn't be doing it. I've given up the hard stuff.

2.

When writing entries in this space that discuss anything with even the slightest potential for spurring further discussion, I have discovered (to my chagrin) that there are some invisible fences. I don't usually realize these fences are there until I trip over them, and that doesn't usually happen until after the discussion has begun and the fists are flying and it's too late. I'd like to avoid building such fences in the first place, but I have never learned the trick.

Although the boundaries are messy and often extremely difficult to make out, the general breakdown seems to be something like this:

There are some places where I would like to foster further discussion and I would be thrilled to see discussion ensue. These are generally the areas where I either think a fun discussion could be had without blood, or where I think an unsettled question waits ready to be turned over and chewed and possibly given new insights, or both. Usually both.

There are some places where, if a discussion happens, it will annoy me mildly because I happen to feel that the weight of the evidence makes that an already settled thing, but I'll usually play along because having a mildly annoying discussion is better than having no discussion at all.

And there are some places where I feel that any contention is absolutely off limits, not usually because the topic is touchy but because it is, to me, completely out of scope of what I was trying to discuss in the first place. I'm talking about places where it feels like I'm trying to have a discussion about art and someone is trying to insist that the real issue is the location of the gallery. They are, to me, utter non sequiturs. They most often tend to be about points of my personal opinions which I don't feel are germane to the matter at hand.

If I were writing part 1 above with an eye toward stimulating further discussion and comments, which I wasn't, I would be interested in

- discussions of which way is the best way to kill a lobster;
- discussions of whether strict vegetarians are hypocrites;
- discussions of whether David Foster Wallace was a genius or a con artist hack;
- discussions of whether Gourmet should have ever published the article in the first place

Note that, in considering these good discussion topics, it isn't because I lack strong opinions on those matters. In fact I have an existing stance on all four (don't think it makes much difference; sometimes, yes; definitely, and I'd love to know how he pulled the wool over so many eyes; no, but not because of its content) - but the topics nonetheless strike me as possible spurs to an interesting and safe argument.

If someone instead tried to raise a discussion over whether there should be any humane concerns over killing a lobster, that would fall into the second category; I'd get annoyed because as far as I'm concerned, there is a preponderance of facts that say if you waste any time agonizing over killing a lobster, you need to do better allocation of your time*. I'd be annoyed, and I might try to deflect the discussion into what seems to me like more fertile territory**, but I'd carry on.

If someone had taken issue with my statement that lobster is a hugely overrated food that coasts along largely on its engineered reputation, then it might get nasty in here. It's not that I mind defending my opinion on the matter; it's just that, to me, what I think of lobster as a foodstuff is not in the least germane to any of these more interesting potential topics, and it seems to me that anyone who would seize upon that to quibble with is not really interested in having a discussion; they're just picking the thing that is most likely to get in my face. They're looking for a fight, not a conversation; and when someone comes in here looking for a fight my first impulse is to give them one.

The problem is that when I really fight, I have no modulation; once you cross that Rubicon, my goal is to leave you with your house burned down, your car destroyed, your fields laid waste and sown with salt, nothing left of your hair and clothing but smoke and a bad scorched smell. I very seldom fight for real because I hate it; and when I do fight I see no point in fighting unless it leaves my opponent permanently incapacitated, just as if I actually have to take a gun or a knife to you ideally I will do it in a way that guarantees you will never be in a position to threaten me with your gun or knife ever again.

I realize that this is a minefield that is nearly impossible for any of you to navigate well. It is nearly impossible for me to navigate well. As I say, I often don't know where the mines are myself until someone happens to step on them. Sometimes that someone is me.

In the examples above, you could be excused for having thought that my opinion of Wallace would be the dangerous topic. No. I have read only enough of him to apply Mark Twain's apple principle; that leaves a lot of room for tectonics. And, frankly, the merits of an author or artist or musician or film star or such are topics that are almost always "safe" to me by definition; perhaps I can't convince you of the merits of Author X and you can't convince me of the merits of Author Y, but ideally neither of us sees this as a basis for drawing blood.

I realize how very difficult this makes any discussion here - it's like trying to defuse a bomb that you're not even sure is in the building - and I can only say in my defense that I don't do this on purpose. But I also don't hold you blameless. Because, time after time, dating back through years and multiple incarnations of this journal, when I have raised a discussable set of topics, people almost always skip over the items I thought I was lining up in category one and have gone straight to firing at the more dangerous targets in categories two and three. This happens so often that it can't be called coincidence.

That said, I also can't call it conspiracy. I'm not actually paranoid enough to believe you're all out to get me. I suspect it has something to do with an ethical sportsman refusing to shoot a tame, hand-fed, no-fear-of-humans deer that's been led to him from its pen. I suspect you see my soft targets and say, well, we're not interested in those safe, caged discussions. But I'm interested in those safe, hand-fed discussions. And I'd like to try to figure out how to steer you to those; and not just because I'd like to avoid having to break out the flamethrower, which only recently has cost me a friend and (as the man said) I can't afford too many more victories like that.

* I have never actually killed a lobster because, as I say, I consider them overrated and don't go out of my way to consume them. I have killed other insectoid foodstuffs - crabs and crawfish - by the fifty-pound bag; and I have killed rabbits and deer (and skinned and eviscerated them, for that matter); I have been present at the slaughtering of a very loud pig; and recently have participated in the killing and plucking of a dozen roosters and a bad-tempered drake. None of these gave me the slightest qualm except the pig, and that was only because he told everyone within ten miles how unhappy he was with the arrangement. If you don't want to be around when a pig is killed, or if you don't want to tour the slaughterhouse, or if you really don't like to contemplate the killing of cute, tasty bunnies, I'll cut you some slack (although I do expect you to be aware that your food doesn't enter the world magically wrapped in clingfilm in neat slices on foam trays and that if you are a carnivore someone else is pulling the trigger for you). But if you can't contemplate killing an insect, then I come back to the question: Have you ever stepped on a bug on purpose?

** For example, the ethics of killing octopus. Now there's a genuine conundrum. The evidence is mounting that octopuses/octopi/octopodes are very, very intelligent as these things go. They are tool-using, they show rapid situational adaptation of behavior, they play, they appear to have rudimentary self-awareness, and so forth. If Wallace had written "Consider the Octopus," reflecting on his chunk of purple-white tako at his local sushi joint, we might have had something. I had a chunk in my chirashi the other night, and the only reason I ate it was because it was already too late and I also hold that wasting food is a sin.

3.

The difference between the behavior of humans and the behavior of lobsters is far smaller than we allow ourselves to believe or admit.

Putting aside the trifling difference that when we eat each other alive, we don't usually do it by literally consuming each others' flesh, the fact is that humans, beneath an extremely thin exoskeleton, are nasty, ill-tempered creatures whose basic philosophy is to fight and/or eat and/or destroy anything that gets in their way or even mildly annoys them.

The only real distinction is that we humans maintain a persistent illusion that we are better and more intelligent and more civilized than lobsters. I'm not denigrating this illusion. The illusion is its own justification; what really separates us from the lobsters is this lone fact, that we are willing and able to believe that we are better than lobsters. This collective lie gives us the ability to, sometimes, in the hands of a few capable people, overcome our fundamental nature; and in the hands of those few capable people, under the right circumstances, something magical happens to the lie; it becomes a truth, simply because people want it enough to be a truth.

But not everyone particularly cares about making this a truth, and very few of us are good enough to pull off that magic trick on a regular basis. So we spend our lives fighting and devouring and hating and climbing each other's carapaces to try to get out of the trap.

And yet, even in cases where it is clear we behave no better than lobsters, we cling desperately to an illusion which, down in those seamy levels of human behavior, holds no purpose at all. Except one: It does some modest amount of work staving off futility and despair. And I suppose that's due some credit.

It is nonetheless, in the hands of most of us, a despicable lie.

4.

It strikes me that another reason my basic positions are so often challenged is that many of you legitimately find them untenable; that you feel I have created a framework which is impossible for you to have discussions in, that I have created an artificial playing field in a climate-controlled dome, and that I get upset when you point this out.

I have four reactions to this:

a. It isn't artificial;
b. I understand the difficulty, and I'm sorry;
c. I don't think it's impossible to have discussions under those conditions;
d. Tough luck.

My basic belief that humans are an evil, corrupt, basically egomaniacal, dangerous, poorly-evolved species who eventually destroy everything they touch is not up for challenge. If you feel you can't work within that framework, I'm sorry, and maybe we should talk about something else. But I didn't adopt that principle just to create a playing field that was uncomfortable for you to work in. In fact, I didn't adopt that stance to any benefit of my own at all. Really, this position causes me to lose sleep and depresses me tremendously and darkens my days - don't you think that if there were any way to rid myself of it, I would have by now?

But I can't - because it, to me, is in that secondary category - of conclusions that are so well and obviously supported by a prepondrance of facts on the ground that to challenge them would be folly. All the evidence suggests that what we humans do best - in fact the only thing we do well - is look out for ourselves while at the same time trying our hardest to screw over everyone and everything else. We are expert survivors; it is the best thing, and some days the only positive thing, I can say for our species.

I hear lobsters were pretty good at that too, until humans came along.

Similarly, I realize some of you have trouble working within my "men are evil" framework. I can't help it. Men are evil. Men and churches, and especially men running churches, are responsible for 99.99999% of the historical evils which have brought us to where we are today. While women have made great strides in recent times, they have often been strides in the wrong direction - they have been women proving that they can be just as nasty as men. If we threw all the men out of government and politics and industry and abolished organized religion, we might have the start of something. Since that's never going to happen, we can fill our idle hours as we spiral into decay and destruction arguing whether a one-gendered, parthenogenetic society would be a cure worse than the disease. I don't mind. It passes the time. But if you try to break me of the idea that men are intrinsically evil until/unless they manage to overcome it, I will just assume you are trying to start a fight; because to me the weight of the evidence of, oh, all recorded history is far too heavy to dispute.

Sometimes I am trying to be contentious; I admit it. Other times - more often than any of you ever, ever give me credit for - I'm just calling it as I see it. Sometimes you see it differently and I say, "Well, your way of seeing it is valid, too." Other times you see it differently and I say, "Well, you're just wrong."

I suppose I could try harder to rope off the areas where "you're just wrong" will always be my response. They're actually fairly few - the two in this section are the only significant ones - and easily avoided. Except I have a feeling you don't think they are as easily avoided as I think they are. I think "men are evil" is like saying "air is good for breathing" or "sky is blue" and having said that can move on to other more important discussions. I suspect you don't agree. I suspect some of you see it as looming, casting a shadow, over anything we say and do here, however unrelated.

I don't know quite what to do about that. I can't admit I'm wrong and recant, because I don't think I'm wrong and I don't think I have anything to recant. And yet I get the idea that on some of my more fervent stances, many of you would settle for nothing less.

5.

The safe thing, the ideal thing, would be to have the sort of conversations I wanted to have in the first place - conversations about art and fiction and movies and poetry and the other such stuff that has been the substance of all my positive, cheerful entries for at least the last decade, the stuff we can discuss safely and happily without ever needing to look at the shadows in the corner.

It doesn't work. If I write something positive about a movie, it generally passes without comment. If I write something negative about a movie, it generally passes without comment. You would think that I would get any number of fervent "you're wrong" replies with something akin to genuine force if, say, I go on a tirade about David Foster Wallace. But no. Apparently the safety and bloodlessness of that discussion, the part that makes it ideal in my eyes, makes it beneath notice for the rest of you. You can't be bothered to invest heavily enough into telling me why I'm wrong about the overratedness of Stanley Kubrick to even formulate a reply. It'd be a waste of energy for you; energy you'd rather spend in the fight trying to convince me that I'm wrong to be basically suspicious of lawyers.

I see how frustrating this all is from your side. Do you see how frustrating it all is from mine?

In other places right now, following the "SF Poetry" entry, we'd all be trading snippets of SF poetry we had composed on the spur of the moment, and we'd be having a lively discussion of what could make SF poetry flourish, and maybe a general discussion of poetry and what we like and dislike about it in general. If that sort of thing ever happened here, I believe I would just keel over from sheer happy. I am not, however, holding my breath.

Oh, sure, some of it is critical mass. I've given up on ever getting more than the core handful of people over here to this journal on a regular basis; frankly, it doesn't suit the joint. This is a back alley, not a major thoroughfare. And some of it is because of the shadows in the corner - although, again, I don't see why we couldn't be having that sort of exchange of ideas and frivolities despite my basic stance that the nature of SF poetry, and SF in general, is yet another Boy-Related Problem. Is that germane to a discussion of poetry? Does it have to come into the picture?

I don't know. Maybe you're just not that sort of people. There is some statistical evidence for this: When asked the obvious question "Why don't you post more over on [that forum you admire so much]?" I eventually am reduced to shrugging and saying, "They're just not my sort of people." Maybe the sort of people whose salons-of-ideas and bon mots I admire are also the sort of people I find annoying to be around on a continual basis; in which case the same principle may work in reverse.

At any rate, this is not just a matter of empty speculation for me. That's the real trouble here. You see, I am aware I am a lobster. Moreover, I'm aware that if I met myself on a kitchen counter, I wouldn't hesitate to throw myself into the kettle. The thing that keeps me together - the thing that keeps me able to paste on that mask of civilization and tell myself that there is some useful purpose to interacting with the world at large - is you. Your feedback, your praise, your dissent - but most of all your basic presence here. The idea that any of you at all come here to read this crap (and my Twitter crap) with any regularity at all, however seldom, is more or less the only thing that keeps me from just turning off the internet entirely and never looking at it again except on business.

I'm quite serious.

So when I'm at a point where it's hard for me to even look at this journal because the nature of some recent interactions has been so alarming, distressing to me ... well, you can imagine what sort of mental condition that leaves me in.

I don't have a good finish to this piece. David Foster Wallace was lousy at endings too.