Picked up a copy of the issue of Gourmet featuring David Foster Wallace's article on the Maine Lobster Festival today. He begins by describing a few aspects of the festival in his trademark way, but then not 1/3 of the way through begins to discuss the issue of boiling lobster alive, to which topic he devotes the rest of the article. It's remarkable not just because he's a great writer and is in top form, but because we get to read someone in the early-ish stages of questioning the practice of eating meat.

I find this really fascinating and I'll be writing about it more; I plan to write a letter to the magazine, partly to offset the hatemail they'll undoubtedly get (Wallace ends by taking the question to the readers: do you reject the notion that animals shouldn't die for your meal out of hand? Do you just avoid thinking about it, and if so, have you questioned your reluctance to think about it? &c.), and partly just to support the process that is certainly going on in his mind and hopefully in the minds of a few readers of the article--the process of confronting your eating habits, thinking about suffering and what you can do to reduce it in the world.