
David Foster Wallace on Life and Work (unabridged) - rms
http://web.archive.org/web/20080213082423/http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html
======
rogerthat
Essay in the Times on this address:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/books/review/Bissell-t.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/books/review/Bissell-t.html)

Nicer (IMHO) WSJ format of Foster's address without the extraneous stylistic
emphases found in the Marginalia version:

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html>

 _"lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all
creation"_

It may seem inconsistent but I find it nicely complements Will Ferrell's
commencement speech at Harvard:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVu8jfhcO9k>

~~~
rms
This essay came up yesterday in response to a short PG essay.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=781583>

The WSJ one is certainly easier to read and doesn't lose much but the almost
excessive stylistic emphasis is what Wallace does; I'll talk the unabridged
version. I do wonder if Wallace himself edited the essay for publication or if
it was edited externally.

~~~
rogerthat
Marginalia received a DMCA takedown notice for their original copy of the
speech:

[http://www.marginalia.org/log/archives/2009/05/so-very-
sorry...](http://www.marginalia.org/log/archives/2009/05/so-very-sorry.html)

But in the comments on their apology page at the link above, there's a
reference to a book in which the address was published with Wallace's
permission, as well an interesting note about an edit that Wallace made to the
speech before publishing it:

 _An essay on April 26 about David Foster Wallace’s commencement address at
Kenyon College in 2005, which has now appeared in book form as "This Is
Water," misstated the speech’s publishing history. It was included in the
collection "The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006"; it is not the case
that Wallace, who died in September, "never published" the address.

The essay may also have left the incorrect impression that both of the
following sentences in the speech were omitted from the text of "This Is
Water": "It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide
with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the
terrible master." In fact, only the second sentence was left out._

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bkovitz
Oh, come on, folks. The DFW piece is ignorant whining. Some problems:

1\. The great many people who live "unexamined lives" tend to be much happier.
According to the research, conservatives are happier than liberals, people in
the Midwest are happier than people on the coasts, etc.

2\. The default settings are really, really good. You should be extremely
skeptical whenever anybody tries to sell you that everyone is born "wrong" and
needs to be "fixed" (circumcision, original sin, chiropractic adjustments for
all children, etc.). (Vaccination and water fluoridation are the only
exceptions I know of, and those are supported by actual science.)

3\. Same with anyone saying, "If you don't do this one thing (which almost
nobody does), your whole life is going to be HORRRRRRIBLE!!!"

4\. Standard religions most certainly do eat people alive: the people who
desperately obsess about them the way his (mostly imaginary) targets obsess
about money, power, etc.

5\. The real message of the article is the style, and what it says, sentence
after sentence, is: "The older, wiser fish knows that life is crap, crap,
crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. And BTW, you know I'm the
older, wiser fish, because I'm such a soul-sapping drag. Oh, and BTW, I'm the
older, wiser fish, and you're not, and if you can't see that, that only proves
what a naïve little twit you are. One day, all you goddamned self-centered
little successful optimistic goddamned twits will all be sorry!!!"

------
rogerthat
Another great Wallace essay:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fede...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

"Federer as Religious Experience"

~~~
rms
Aaronsw compiled the complete list. <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/offline2> I
have the .pdfs of some of the paywalled ones, anyone reading this can email
me.

~~~
unalone
That link you put up doesn't mention any DFW articles.

~~~
rms
Sorry, I must have pasted the wrong link.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AaronSw/David_Foster_Walla...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AaronSw/David_Foster_Wallace_nonfiction)

~~~
rms
Actually I'm pretty sure that I AwesomeBar'd aaronsw and copy and pasted the
first thing that came up without looking at what the URL actually was. The
right URL was second under my AwesomeBar for aaronsw.

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springcoil
I think this is a very powerful post. Something I regularly thinking about.
Especially the powerful self centered posted ideas. I like PG's idea that we
should embrace randomness and avoid our self centered ness. Its something I do
struggle with evry day. this article unfortunately at times reads like a
suicide note.

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michaelneale
I had never heard of David Foster Wallace before this. Thanks for sharing it,
has really made my day.

~~~
brentvwilliams
If you haven't checked it out yet, you should definitely read his essay "A
Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again."

[http://harpers.org/media/pdf/dfw/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-000...](http://harpers.org/media/pdf/dfw/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf)

~~~
tptacek
You should buy the book; the Illinois State Fair essay is worth the price
alone. Also highly recommended is the audio version of "Consider The Lobster",
in which DFW implements inline footnotes _in audio_.

I'm halfway through Infinite Jest right now (putting me many weeks behind
<http://infinitesummer.org>, and I recommend it as well.

~~~
jraines
The opening essay on television (E Unibus Pluram) is a great read as well.

Another great one (from "Consider The Lobster"), if you're interested in
linguistics and who gets to decide what is "acceptable" English, is here:
<http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html> (Extremely long
-- if any of the shorter pieces really grab you, you really should just go to
Amazon and snag both nonfiction collections.)

