"Consider The Lobster"

To me I felt like the genre of the article was a mix between a personal narrative and a research paper. The author was telling a story but also incorporated a lot of facts into the article, this helped the paper flow.

The footnotes in this article provide a more detailed description of certain parts of the article and adds information that doesn't exactly flow within the writing but is useful to know. For example footnote 5 "Of course, the common practice of dipping the lobster meat in melted butter torpedoes all these happy fat-specs, which none of the Council's promotional stuff ever mentions, any more that potato-industry PR talks about sour cream and bacon bits." This example helps give background information and add detail to what the passage was initially talking about.

The article does shifts from the topic of the Maine Lobster fest to the topic of just Lobster facts. I believe he does this to try to show the reader to think deep into the events that go into putting on the Maine Lobster Fest, not just think about eating lobsters. He wants the reader to think about how the lobster caught and prepared and learn the true meaning behind the fest.