This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

David Foster Wallace

Apr 2009 · Sold by Little, Brown

About this ebook

In this rare peak into the personal life of the author of numerous bestselling novels, gain an understanding of David Foster Wallace and how he became the man that he was.
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.

Ratings and reviews

I had never heard of David Foster Wallace nor any of his books until I saw the YouTube video dramatizing this speech. I only have good things to say about this speech, so I'll keep it short. I quote this speech in every other essay I write, even in casual conversation. However, I am taken aback by the business practices of the current owners of his IP. The very well made video has been removed because apparently using segments from a college speech infringes on copyright. The Free Sample is just the first paragraph. Once you pay $9 for it, it's 300 pages of 1-3 short paragraphs per page, with white space and lines filling the spaces between. Great words, bad system.

The reminder that "This is Water" will always come to my mind. From a great man comes a great speech filled with the truth that we all must learn ourselves. I challenge everyone to remember to keep an open mind, keep yourself from the prison you will never realize you are in without an open mind, and help yourself remember what is important in life. The collective consciousness of all of us is what it takes to shape this world, and the more people who understand the message in this speech the better.

"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day."

About the author

David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1962 and raised in Illinois, where he was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He received bachelor of arts degrees in philosophy and English from Amherst College and wrote what would become his first novel, The Broom of the System, as his senior English thesis. He received a masters of fine arts from University of Arizona in 1987 and briefly pursued graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University. His second novel, Infinite Jest, was published in 1996.

Wallace taught creative writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College, and published the story collections Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion, the essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and Consider the Lobster. He was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers' Award, and was appointed to the Usage Panel for The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. He died in 2008. His last novel, The Pale King, was published in 2011.