David Foster Wallace 2005 Commencement Speech at Kenyon College: This is Water.
On May 21, 2005 David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech at Kenyon College, and is the only public speech Wallace gave detailing his outlook on life. It's probably one of his most read pieces, and was posthumously published in a small book format (although I think the format doesn't do justice to what was intended to be a speech). In it, he argues, quite beautifully, against “unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.” He begins with a parable:
"There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, 'Morning, boys. How’s the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, 'What the hell is water?'"
Here's the audio, as no known video exists:
Thanks for putting it up. Very important work, this speech by Wallace. I really enjoy rereading that speech every now and then, to remind myself of what matters to me.
Me too!
A brilliant speech not come across him before but will be look out for him now. Thanks for sharing 💯🐒
Classic thx for this !!!
This is a great speech! DFW has been hero of mine ever since reading Infinite Jest. That book is truly incredible. It took me a while to understand what was going on and make sense of the book, but once I got into it I was blown away at the amount of work and imagination that went into writing it. In my humble opinion, he's one of the truly great authors of our time. Thanks!
i have loved this speech since it became public. i think my favorite line is this:
"Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you."
absolute brilliance.
Such a great line, and so true. Wallace was a true gift.
seriously. what a fucking talent he was. his prose was often too dense for me, but i almost always enjoyed whatever of his i read. such a loss for literature.
He was such a brilliant thinker. Gone too soon.