Describe Books Supposing This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
Original Title: | This is Water |
ISBN: | 0316068225 (ISBN13: 9780316068222) |
Edition Language: | English |
David Foster Wallace
Hardcover | Pages: 138 pages Rating: 4.51 | 21024 Users | 1786 Reviews
Narration In Pursuance Of Books This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate 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 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.
Specify Containing Books This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
Title | : | This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life |
Author | : | David Foster Wallace |
Book Format | : | Hardcover |
Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 138 pages |
Published | : | April 14th 2009 by Little, Brown and Company (first published 2009) |
Categories | : | Nonfiction. Philosophy. Writing. Essays. Psychology. Self Help. Literature. American. Education |
Rating Containing Books This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
Ratings: 4.51 From 21024 Users | 1786 ReviewsWeigh Up Containing Books This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
This Is Water is kind of like a modern version of Rainer Maria Rilkes Letters to a Young Poet. With the exception, of course, that This Is Water is not a collection of letters, does not discuss poetry or writing, and is not addressed to a single individual but to a colleges entire student body. Other than that, though, theyre pretty much the same thing.What I mean is that theres something very inspirational (for lack of a better word) in these texts whose words seem to have been composedThis 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 his to read at some point in the future, when I would really want something new of his. Of course that has changed to their being nothing new to release, except for unpublished things that might see

This is water.And I have to learn to breath in it.This is water.
Read a self-improvement book.This is a short little book that my dad gave me to read after receiving it from a friend of his. I have several friends who have read DFW's other works and really loved his writing. I have never read anything of his though I know he words have been known to cause ideas of gargantuan proportions inside individuals who love him. I also know that he suffered from major depression and anxiety and ultimately took his life in 2008.Basically this little book is the
What the hell is this you may ask. Well, this is a commencement address by David Foster Wallace to the graduates of Kenyon College in 2005. But why would you want to read that someone else asks. Well, I wanted to be introduced to David Foster Wallace, and this relatively short essay seemed like a good place to start. I'm ready to begin reading Wallace's Infinite Jest, a 1,000 page Everest of a book, which I'm looking forward to about as much as I was to reading Joyce's Ulysses. Also in my
FURTHER UPDATED REVIEW (consolidation of general remarks of mine from review comment threads for this book/speech):Is This Speech Depressing?I have to respectfully disagree and say that I found this to be uplifting in a really serious way--like my version of a Chicken Soup For The Soul sense of uplifting (er, uh, something)--which is a feeling of redemption via facing messy truths and feeling my own thoughts to be extremely validated by his beautiful ideas and phrasings. I'd read it many times
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