Electronic resource
English language
Published April 22, 2009 by Little, Brown and Company.
Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in THIS IS WATER. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading.
A speech-turned-book that asks us to focus on what matters. A good one to revisit in book or video form.
It's an interesting assessment of ego, of why education matters, and why we need to control our thoughts. Most troubling: "The capital-t Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to thirty, or maybe even fifty, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head." Wallace killed himself in 2008. I think he got lost along the way, but knew what the journey was about.
