If more proof was needed that I’m not hip, I’m sorry to say that I never read David Foster Wallace–and indeed only vaguely knew who he was–before his suicide this past September. But I recently came across this incredible piece of his published in 2004 in Gourmet magazine. Incredible not least because it was actually published in Gourmet. Wallace was assigned to cover the Maine Lobster Festival and spends the better part of the article weighing the moral pros and cons of boiling alive sentient beings for our gustatory pleasure:

Given this article’s venue and my own lack of culinary sophistication, I’m curious about whether the reader can identify with any of these reactions and acknowledgments and discomforts. I am also concerned not to come off as shrill or preachy when what I really am is confused. Given the (possible) moral status and (very possible) physical suffering of the animals involved, what ethical convictions do gourmets evolve that allow them not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh-based viands (since of course refined enjoyment, rather than just ingestion, is the whole point of gastronomy)? And for those gourmets who’ll have no truck with convictions or rationales and who regard stuff like the previous paragraph as just so much pointless navel-gazing, what makes it feel okay, inside, to dismiss the whole issue out of hand? That is, is their refusal to think about any of this the product of actual thought, or is it just that they don’t want to think about it? Do they ever think about their reluctance to think about it? After all, isn’t being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one’s food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet? Or is all the gourmet’s extra attention and sensibility just supposed to be aesthetic, gustatory?

You have to think they got some angry letters to the editor after this one.