Consider the Lobster

Host, the talk-radio profile, trades Wallace's usual footnotes for a boxed-and-arrow sidebar layout that several readers call more disorienting than illuminating; one names it “the one thing I don't like” in the whole collection despite liking the reporting underneath it. Authority and American Usage runs past sixty pages on grammar and usage, and even fans admit the argument is fully made long before the essay lets go. The Updike piece draws the sharpest complaint of all: a critic calls it plainly “a negative review of John Updike” rather than a review of the novel it's supposed to cover. A harsher critic argues the title essay itself is “devoid of anything like an organizing thought,” with Wallace's erudition reading as showing off rather than genuine curiosity. How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart and the Dostoevsky essay are the two pieces readers most often admit to skimming.