Probably not a popular opinion... I first heard him read this shortly after it came out, and at first I thought it was great, but the second time I heard it, it fell apart. This fell flat for me considering it was a commencement speech. It reads like it was written by a sad lonely man, for other sad lonely men. He was speaking to a huge auditorium full of parents and children, and he wrote something for himself. He couldn't imagine a world where there was more than his life, outside his water. The world of every parent in that room. I've always felt like he made his point in ways he never meant to.
That's what they get for inviting a depressed existentially angsty speaker! He was never going to make some uplifting speech, that's not who he was. The speech is true to himself and that's a good thing. But yeah, as a fan of his, I wouldn't invite him as a commencement speaker...
I really like this address but your comment made me reflect that what I like most is probably DFWs delivery and style rather than the content of his message, which I don’t find to be especially profound. But also, he was a writer and a often depressed one so when you invite that kind of person what you might get is really well delivered performance by someone who knows how to sound wise and not cliched- and in that respect I think he succeeded. Though of course it is true that after the relatively meaningful period of college (for many) the absolute mudanity of the adult world is
like a slap in the face.
Children are the audience for freshmen orientation.
Isn't the idea that, by the time you are being given a commencement speech, you are an adult? Isn't that kinda the point of this speech? "Society says you've finished school and you're an adult now, but it's not gonna be that easy".
I feel like it would be disingenuous to invite a chronically depressed man and expect an upbeat discourse about how exciting life can be in college. I think it's a defining feature of depression to fill one's consciousness to the extent where there's little left for acknowledging other things or other people. The works I read of David Foster Wallace's seemed different ways of him expressing his discontent about the world and how little importance he gave it.
Yeah I don’t see what the hype was about this guy. He was physically abusive towards his girlfriend, was creepy with her son, and he killed himself. Seems like a loser.
Have you read any of his essays or novels? IMO consider the lobster is one of the best essay collections ever and Infinite Jest is the best novel by an American since Ernest Hemingway. Yea he was an asshole, but his writing is good.
> Infinite Jest is the best novel by an American since Ernest Hemingway
This remark is painfully cringe-inducing, and I can only think you haven't read very much at all. And if you think you have, then I can most assuredly say you haven't.
Perhaps it's because the parent can't distinguish between the person and the work. Show me someone who's produced remarkable output and hasn't done shitty things.
The "well-documented" seems to be a disgruntled ex-lover talking about a dead person who can't comment on it anymore, and then other people writing what the disgruntled ex-lover said, or is there more to it?
Reading this again, for the upteenth time, I'm struck by how much of David Foster Wallace's work had simple mores and cliches but expressed in such a high brow way so as to not feel silly. Infinite Jest, which I read at 19, felt so significant because he managed to say something very trite and cliche in such a powerful way.
Quote:
"""
Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about "teaching you how to think". If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.
"""
I highly recommend the film version of "Interviews with Hideous Men" (directed by John Krasinski of all people). It captures the inner, quiet desperation of people in the 21st century.
> I suspect this kind of stoicism — for Marcus and Wallace and some modern popularizers — is a response to perceiving the breakdown of a functioning world. Their prescription for dealing with such troubles is to develop profound internal strength, and in doing so the stoic attitude can dodge some societal-level failures by compartmentalizing toward a robust individualism. While this is good in situations where you truly can’t change anything, where it fails is more subtle. By couching success as something that happens entirely within the ego, it encourages one to downplay anything external. If a stoic attitude is applied too liberally, the insistence that success lies solely within becomes an unconscious dodge of difficult forces and responsibilities beyond one’s complete control.
Wallace is pleading to us to hear the call of primitivism (this is no stoic plea, AFAIK). Awareness as a reversion to the primeval, which is a common act for everything perfect according to Rilke. Husserl cries: "Back to the things themselves!" Merton could only write the lines "[l]ife is this simple: [w]e are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time..." from a primordial ground. Being conscious by considering a "landscape as it is when [we are] not there...” as mentioned by Weil.
Wallace is implicitly telling us that it is only through the annihilation of the self that we can pay proper attention (and see the truth), am I the only one who views it this way? I read no solipsism in his speech, the contrary rather: "[l]ove dares the self to leave itself behind, to enter into poverty" notes Carson. Bachelard writes, "[f]orgetting the earth and disavowing our earthly being is a double necessity for whoever loves the water with a cosmic love... then, there is nothing before water... above water, there is nothing... [w]ater is the whole wide world"; water was everything for Wallace.
I... I think you entirely missed the point of the commencement speech.
The point of his speech is NOT that the world is hard, and difficult, and in order to combat, survive and thrive in that environment you need to reshape your viewpoint so as to see the world in an easier light, or amend yourself to better accept your situation.
The point of his speech is that from childhood through college, the average American life changes dramatically every few years. New experiences, new schools, new friends. But after college, most of us begin to develop routines. Many of us specialize. We do so in a way that is unfamiliar to us before that age, as it is only after college that life has the potential to stay stable for many years in a row, and thereby allow many of us to begin building routines, foundations, and patterns that can last a lifetime.
Routines of habit also go hand in hand with building routines of thought. In school, high school, college, you are constantly bombarded with new ideas and experiences. But 10 years into the workforce, depending on how you chose to live your life, you may find that this happens less frequently. That you've automated some parts of your life mentally. That you've fossilized some aspects of your thinking, in order to focus on other aspects and goals of your life.
And DFW is pointing out that this is both extremely common, and dangerous.
> "The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive"
What he's saying is that if you adopt any specific ideology as fixed, then the persistent problems you will encounter in your life will be precisely the ones your current ideology is unable to fix. (Almost tautologically, because otherwise, you would have fixed them already.)
The point of the speech is not that you have to change your viewpoint in order to make yourself amenable to the outside world.
The point of his speech is that you need to be willing to always look at a situation from outside your current perspective, and be willing to continue growing, learning, and upgrading your current beliefs and viewpoints in order to be able to reassess and potentially solve your problems, goals, life and ambitions.
His 'fear' is that many of the students will think that their learning part of their life is complete, because they have graduated college.
DFW is trying to instill in them that college did not finish their requirements to learn. College merely taught them how to learn, in the hope that they would continue learning for the rest of their lives.
That is literally the opposite of stoicism.
DFW is literally saying that if someone adopts a completely fixed and stoic mindset, they might as well kill themselves. Because it is only by getting over one's routines, and consciously choosing to look at one's own problems from new perspectives, and then employing their collegiately taught skills of learning that one finds new approaches and philosophies and perspectives and SOLUTIONS to their problems. And it is by doing that, that one can ultimately find a fulfilling and successful life. Failing to do that, getting permanently stuck in mental rut, will lead to missing out on so much of what makes life positive, successful and happy, that he compares such people to the walking dead.
The point of his speech is that you need to be willing to always look at a situation from outside your current perspective, and be willing to continue growing, learning, and upgrading your current beliefs and viewpoints in order to be able to reassess and potentially solve your problems, goals, life and ambitions.
The point of the speech from my readings/listenings are not what you've described above. To me, for all the pithy quote-worthy snippets in this talk, the most important line is the explicit suggestion in the second half of this sentence (emphasis added):
>The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
For all the worthwhile ideas Wallace puts forth in this speech, I've long thought this the most valuable and unrecognized one.
Want to know what your water looks like? Truly care for others.
There's no atheism; we all worship. Then worship such that you benefit others.
Think your world is too much routine and drudgery? Just try to understand what those around you are enduring.
Believe you're educated and know how to think? Try doing it on behalf of others.
The mind is a terrible master, so get outside those walls and try to understand the mind of someone else.
I think that if you generally practice getting outside of your self-centered default setting, and practice looking at situations from an outside perspective, you almost immediately start practicing viewing situations from other people's point of view.
I think that very quickly leads to the realization that a foundational aspect of life is how we all care for one another, and how you can do so as well.
I think DFW recognizes this, and hopes that the people listening to this speech ultimately come to this same conclusion on their own, amongst many other that such a mindset can reveal over time.
And I think that bleeds through his works, this one included.
Lastly, I agree with you, that that sentence holds an important truth. The heart of all moral philosophy is about the question of what we owe each other. It is a genuinely valuable disposition to keep in mind.
"What will you say? What will you do?"
"Oh -- I don't know." Eliot's sorrow and exhaustion dropped away for a moment as he became
enchanted by the problem. A birdy little smile played over his lips. "Go over to her shack, I
guess. Sprinkle some water on the babies, say, 'Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the
summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got
about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- :
"'God damn it, you've got to be kind.'"
Probably one of the smartest people who ever lived. His breadth of knowledge was probably unsurpassed. He wrote/knew about everything, from math to philosophy to pharmacology ,sports, etc. By the end of undergrad he effectively a top-tier philosopher and then branched out to writing, in which he also excelled. Kinda like Issac Asimov in terms of knowing so much, but a completely different genre.
FWIW, his venture into math writing with Everything and More [1] was widely criticized.
The wikipedia has links to the full text of three reviews: "laced through and through with blunders of every magnitude." "Any reader keen to gain insights into the infinite would do better to go back to Aristotle." "The presentation grows increasingly frantic and disorganized. Nothing makes sense."
>a top-tier philosopher and then branched out to writing
I probably can't replicate the experience for anyone else, but I was astounded by learning the year in which Infinite Jest was released only after finishing it. The only other fiction that's led me to totally misapprehend the year of publication like that is Parable of the Sower.
I listen to this speech every 2 months. I have known a colleague for years now, but he became a good friend because I was able to understand his perspective in a useless conflict. This speech is so powerful, and calls attention to true human virtues which are easily forgotten (empathy, compassion). It is good reminder of how we live our lives as center of our own universe, completely unaware!
Around 13:30? Was your take that they were misunderstanding him and cheering approvingly at the huge stupid lane-blocking SUVs with religious or patriotic stickers?
I had the opposite take. They got him and were cheering his rant.
You've misunderstood somewhere. The audience was cheering his rant, and he chides them for it. His message was to not think like the way he was in his rant.
Or, in keeping with the content: did you consider that you might have misunderstood?
Personally I took it the same way some other commenters did: the audience is plenty well educated to understand his point, but they were cheering the masterful description, and he was riffing.
Guy's dead, so we'll never know, but hopefully we can learn the lesson he was offering and not be so self-righteously confident when engaging each other about something that could be interpreted two ways.
It's quite interesting how many nuances and interpretations a close reading provides.
> I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV’s and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] — this is an example of how NOT to think, though — most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers.
I was in masterful description - riffing camp, but I can see what jstx1, bmj, Nition see.
He's angry in traffic. The audience cheers were are also angry in traffic. He gently, in a joke, says wait the point is not to be angry in traffic. Very plausible reading.
> Or, of course, if I’m in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time
There was no applause at the previous example:
> And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line.
It's the "more socially conscious liberal arts" bit, being delivered at a liberal arts commencement ceremony to an audience that gets the joke.
his storytelling reads very differently when you know that he killed himself 3 years after this talk and was depressed for the last 20 years of his life.
I liked Infinite Jest and Consider The Lobster And Other Essays. Not easy reads in my opinion, especially Infinite Jest obviously, but interesting and original books.
The movie The End of the Tour (2015), although most probably inaccurate in his portrait of the man (from what I’ve read), is an enjoyable fiction that just happens to use Wallace as one of the characters. I recommend it.
End of Tour is enjoyable and most of the words are his own, but there is a clear need to make it a story about a guy who later commits suicide, and so all the acting and tonal stuff is inflected to that end. Having read the book first, the movie just seemed so much sadder and devoid of a lot of the joy that made the book so incredible.
I watched the movie recently and semi-liked it (actors great, plot kind of dull, and all in all not exactly that enlightening), also read some negative reviews. What was the inaccurate part, was there any massive miss or so?
I don’t know… I just enjoyed it as fiction. The problem with movies based on real events or on real people is that at, the end of the day, they are just fiction, and I guess they are inevitably going to disappoint some of those who know more about the real-life events or people they are based on. On the other hand, I can also see the value of getting the facts right and characters that respect the spirit of the real people they are based on. I don’t have a strong opinion on the matter as you can see.
Ah I see now what you mean. I guess I agree. With this movie specifically I had some moments that were close to the "uncanny valley", as the actor playing Wallace was so closely imitating media versions of Wallace (from TV interviews) that it sometimes got almost to this person, but never exactly, which feels weirdly off. I also had the feeling that he was not portraying the real person, but rather the anxious persona he showed in those interviews.
ive read ij, with the footnotes and it took me so long I think I forgot some of the first part of the book while reading the later part. I enjoyed it kind of like a tv series but with so many episodes I forget the first season but kept watching.
So on one hand Ive heard the hype, and it was good...but I wonder if it was shorter it could have had a bigger punch (like 1984 or something else) and while typing this I wonder if this tv show analogy ( Rick and Morty comes to mind) is a kind of good analogy? Or maybe im a philistine...
I was almost going to buy the Pale king today but ill get it soon and start reading it.
It’s not uncommon to page back as you get about 200 pages in to reconnect things, etc. but the book is literature and a big part of enjoying it is enjoying it for its sake. The tangents and ideas and writing - it’s just a fun book to read and imagine with it.
People get hung up on plot and other devices which make for great stories. And that’s great. IJ isn’t for everyone - but if you love literature there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy a long love making session to the book. It is extremely well crafted.
I have read most of his stuff, including The Pale King. It is absolutely worth reading, but also recall that it was published in an unfinished state posthumously. It is not a particularly easy read but has some extremely compelling themes.
the speech is pretty good. Basically he advocates for thinking for yourself, compassion, less egoism.
I find it very weird that they made a book out of it with 144 pages. How come 144 pages? Pretty easy, every page only has one line. But the people on amazon like it so who am I to judge.
As a non native, I had to read it first, then listen to him while reading it again to begin to understand it. Thanks to have posted this and allowed me to discover this talk, you made my evening.
