SPEAKING OF CONSUMER GUILT AND COMPLICITY WITH EVIL: David Foster Wallace's somewhat notorious piece in Gourmet Magazine from last summer on the morality of cooking and eating lobster is now available online (PDF).
Me? I'm a member of the knife-in-head pre-dismemberment school/steam in sea water school, which tends to really gross people out during the process, what with the tail often reflexively thrashing around for a few seconds even after being severed from the rest of the lobster, but that way (a) they die in a way other than being steamed alive, and (b) no one has to deal with lobster carcass when eating it. Wallace's point about accepting one's moral agency for the act rings true to me -- I don't think you should eat lobster without accepting the fact that you're killing something that's alive, right there in your kitchen, for your pleasure.
If you can accept that -- and I do, with melted butter on the side -- then there are few better ways to enjoy summer's bounty. Does anyone out there (who isn't vegetarian generally) have a particular problem with lobster?
J'ai appris des choses interessantes grace a vous, et vous m'avez aide a resoudre un probleme, merci.
ReplyDelete- Daniel