This Is Water

A thought-provoking essay from David Foster Wallace, adapted from his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, about the importance of choosing how we think, learning to see beyond ourselves, and finding meaning in the ordinary moments of everyday life.

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 andthe 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. He reminds us that we have the power to choose patience, understanding, and compassion, even in the most mundane moments of life.

• "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