This Is Water The Original David Fos..., David Foster Wallace
This Is Water The Original David Fos..., David Foster Wallace
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This Is Water: The Original David Foster Wallace Recording
Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

Author: David Foster Wallace

Narrator: David Foster Wallace

Unabridged: 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/01/2010


Synopsis

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Prerna on May 17, 2021

So much of the language I use everyday is centred around 'I'. I feel it too. I get you. I understand what you're going through. I. Me. Mine. Somewhere within these juxtapositions of the objective reality as it exists and my personal view of it, lies the fine line between empathy and self-obsession. I som......more

Goodreads review by Cosimo on August 03, 2018

Non c'è superficie Introdotti da un memorial speech di De Lillo e curati con postfazione da Luca Briasco, scritti tra il 1984 e il 1991, i cinque racconti qui raccolti gettano uno sguardo sullo stile e la personalità letteraria di David Foster Wallace. Il tema principale è l'amore nelle diverse decli......more

Goodreads review by Greg on May 15, 2017

This may come as a surprise to people who know me, but I never read this before it came out in book format. I knew it existed, but like most of the occasional and short pieces by DFW I held off on reading them. At the time his writing came out so infrequently, that I always wanted to have things of......more

Goodreads review by Infada on July 30, 2019

...μικρή αναγνωστική μπουκίτσα, διαμαντάκι!......more

Goodreads review by karen on September 02, 2021

so. it gets five stars because of how terribly sad i still am. i read this online, of course, years and years ago, but i reread it in book form, just to see if anything had been added. it hasn't. just the fact of his death on the flap. i'd really rather have added material than that fact, wouldn't y......more


Quotes

"David Foster Wallace's unbelievable graduation speech...will inspire you."—Daily Candy

"We read Wallace because he forces us to think. He makes us consider what's beneath us and around us--like water."—Alicia J. Rouverol, The Christian Science Monitor

"Think of it as The Last Lecture for intellectuals."—Time

"None of the cloudlessly sane and true things he had to say about life in 2005 are any less sane or true today...[This is Water] reminds us of [Wallace's] strength and goodness and decency--the parts of him the terrible master [the mind] could never defeat, and never will."—Tom Bissel, New York Times Book Review

"Striking...is [Wallace's] evocative insight and humor."—Mark Follman, Mother Jones