Delivered on a Significant Occasion - about Living a Compassionate Life

This book was suggested by Shane Parrish at Farnam Street and I'm thankful I had the opportunity to read. The book was on the money and the insights were invaluable. This was my first encounter with DFW and his writing (or speeches) and I'm curious to explore his writing. This is water will be a regular read for me and a reminder of the choices we made every day in our lives.

This short speech packs a real punch. Though much of his thoughts may seem intuitive, I found the obvious insights inspiring. His advice brings to mind "easier said than done" but an admirable goal to target.

A moving 22-minute speech when delivered by David, the audio track readily available on your favorite online video channel.

A well-documented and easily Google-able text, entire speech, on the internet.

And now, for those that require hardcover or digital books to slow down their reading, to create "atmosphere" in order to better appreciate the words of Mr. Wallace, there is this book, with one or two lines per page, 140+ pages, hardbound, for your pleasure. Like reading a fortune cookie, one might read a page a day to savor the zeal of the graduation speech. Conversely, one could sit and read the entire book in less than the time it took David to say it, aloud, at Kenyon College. The extremes are allowed by this book.

I pity those that say they enjoy the speech broken into a few words per page to allow them to "slow down" and "appreciate the words". They must be ones to take ten dollars each day out of an ATM machine to control their spending. Perhaps these same people eat with a miniature fork to better enjoy food.

For the rest of us, who have self-control, the question is not of expense (this book is, unquestionably, the most expensive method for taking in this speech--the others are free); not of efficiency (the work being so short, we all have the time); not of pretty, bound baubles with eventually yellowing pages, broken-glue bindings and housing silverfish while aging on a sagging bookshelf (the bibliomaniacs among us will cringe); but of how best to take in the message. How best to connect with the author's intent.

Do newsroom soundbites reflect the context of a Presidential speech? Would Twitter's 140-character tweets do justice to the Gettysburg Address? Sadly, the answer is that the true context of words is held in the sentences in which they are homed; those sentences next dwell in paragraphs; paragraphs build themes.

And the overall message is lost in shattering a flowing speech into publisher-determined, bite-sized "nibbles", like smashed M&Ms that will leave one licking their fingers to get the last crumbs of chocolate from the bottom of the candy dish.

David Wallace, whether in Jest, King, Broom, or any of his essays and shorts, is best kept whole--the way he demanded it. The enforcer, Mr. Wallace was, of leaving things as he intended them. Only with a fight would he cut pages, re-work styles, or even change punctuation; the fragmentation of a monumental speech would be disallowed by the author. This is evident in any profile of Mr. Wallace, and in particular the DT Max biography (which is money much better spent if one wishes to "know" this author) Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace

To hear David's words, from his mouth, with his intonation and inflections, is priceless. Fortunately, that speech is archived elsewhere, as ubiquitous as butterflies in the springtime. And, best of all, it's free.

full of wit, irreverence, and very philosophical. This book is almost poetry because it is printed one page with one thought. His speech to the graduates of Kenyon College offered much food for thought is graduates. I was very disappointed when I discovered that the author had committed suicide after stating such a deep and meaningful set of beliefs.

Diehard DFW fans may have noticed that this book lists for 144 pages, when his Kenyon commencement address, widely circulated on the internet, can't be more than five or six.

This is just the Kenyon Address. Don't ask how they get 144 pages of content.

That said, it is a great example of the late Wallace's work.

I re-read this whenever I think to do so. It is a wonderful reminder from a genius that we can choose how to think about the world. It is such a tragedy that his illness obscured his own truth from him.

Wonderful thought provoking essay. Sadly being presented as a book I think would have been a source of great embarrassment to this visionary thinker. At best it has enough content to qualify as a booklet. Way overpriced.

As others have noted, this is a fifteen minute read packaged to resemble a book. One sentence per page, some pages literally contain four words.

I ordered this remotely from my Kindle, so it wasn't convenient to check the reviews. I will now know to *always* check reviews.

My initial reaction was the same as the other reviews, huge rip off. But what the editors have done changes for the better the experience of reading what I already thought was an amazing speech. Most of us read the speech on the internet , which because of the medium is always cursory. The book makes us slow down and reflect on the message, and it's not trite or trivial or obvious (except in the sense that any observation that is clearly true seems trite). It's ten bucks very well spent- I bought a bunch of copies for gifts.

You will find this same text all over the internet, it's very short, and a ripoff at 10. It may make sense to buy the print version so you have it to ponder over slowly, but the kindle version is a flat ripoff, plain and simple. the store needs to remove it or make it free.

I bought this "book" w/o knowing enough about it or reading reviews. It was recommended on some radio program or other and I had added it to my list of books to look into. This mediocre commencement speech delivered by David Foster Wallace to the 2005 graduates of Kenyon College. Save your $10 and watch it free with video content here https://vimeo.com/68855377

If you're like me, odds are you perked up at the idea of this book. In 2005 David Foster Wallace gave a brilliant commencement speech about life, education, and basically how to deal with graduation. It's one of those wonderful speeches that you could have fifty people listen to and gain fifty slightly different interpretations from. I was rather hoping that this book would contain at least one such interpretation, but no- this is solely DFW's speech. For some this will be somewhat of a disappointment, but not overly so. There's still merit in having a hard copy of this that isn't one of the various PDFs floating around out there.

What really puts a big damper on this book is that in order to puff it out to a full 137 pages, they chopped the speech up and put bits and pieces on each page. By this I mean that it isn't the typical "paragraph paragraph, page break, paragraph, etc" layout that you'd expect. You can have only 1-2 sentences per page on multiple pages. Once in a while this does help give an extra bit of emphasis to some lines, such as "This is water. This is water." lines at the end. For the most part, however, this is just irritating and occasionally can draw you out of the speech rather than keep you reading without any gaps or hesitations. Part of the speech's visual impact on papre is having most of it together and this causes the speech to loose some of it's oomph.

This really has to be one of the worst gift book adaptations of something that I've seen in a while, and trust me- I've seen quite a few in my day. If you're getting this because you really want a print version, then this will suffice although I would say there are better options. If this is something you're getting for a graduate, friend, or whatnot, it'd probably be better to just give them a printed copy of the speech or as one reviewer mentioned, buy it in one of the anthologies that contains it. This speech is wonderful but this layout does it a huge disservice and I don't think the layout should be given a freebie because of its content- especially when it diminishes it as a result.

This is short enough to read in an hour. The speech is out there on YouTube. Even a shortened version if you are really busted for time.

It's a (mostly) simple distillation of lots of philosophy, probably the culmination of the best of the current American consensus of living life.

For those two reasons I am enthusiastic about a 5 star rating. It's an excellent foundation and should be in the vocabulary of every interested in philosophy.

Life includes lots of monotony. It doesn't matter where you are at. When we are honest money, popularity doesn't define freedom, joy, a life well lived. What is freedom is the opportunity to choose compassion. To choose what we think about. The most fulfilling way to think is to shift the central focus from ourselves as the center of the universe (which is our default setting) to something more aware of the existence of others.

DFW does a good job of giving simple examples to state this premise well. Intellectual and educated people will nod at you when they see you with this book. It's designed well and you will stare at the open space on the page and run your fingers on the smooth matte finish while you ponder your existence.

It makes me want to learn more about DFW and his suicide. I recommend the book "All Things Shining" for more of this style of accessible philosophy.

I love the young fish's response in the opening story..."what the hell is water?"

I am not writing to comment on the format of this sentence- a- page book. Rather my comment is based on the thought itself, the thought of a tremendously articulate and intelligent person. I had not really considered the work of David Foster Wallace before but in the last few days I have been discovering more and more of it. I in fact listened to the speech which consitutes the text of this book on YouTube and was struck again and again by the insightfulness, the beauty, the originality of the mind. And something else. There seems a kind of honesty in Foster Wallace which comes with a great depth of understanding. He truly it seems to me speaks 'truths' which are in the back of many of our minds but which we do not succeed in articulating.
The text here which is the speech of a commencement address he gave at Kenyon College in 2005 is rich in reflection on the 'form' of the commencement address, on its meaning. He reveals an understanding of the traditional function of the commencement address and then makes his own ironic and critical adaptation of the original form.
He tries to instruct the graduates in 'life wisdom' and not simply career wisdom but does this in his own oblique way. His message is one which emphasizes the centrality of conscious direction and choice of what one will be devoted to, of compassion and openness to others, of a kind of awareness which gives life a different dimension.
His language is brilliant and is clearly the work of a verbal genius. Here is perhaps the sentence which comes closest to giving the heart of his message in this speech.

"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day"

This book struck my curiosity one day. So I bough it even though it has 137 pages and it sometimes has less than a paragraph on one page. For a book that says very little, it actually says quite a lot. I'm extremely happy that I bought this book. It's short. It has a powerful message. And it's one of those books you must pass on for others to read.

What is the meaning of the title 'This is Water,' is the question I was asking myself when I bought the book. I bought it mostly because I was interested to know the concept of 'compassion' was related to such a title. I'm not sure I know, even after reading it, but other things have become clear as a result of reading it.

David Foster Wallace begins the book with a conversation between a religious individual and an atheist. Such a conversation has plagued us for many generations. Why is it important to discuss it? It probably has to do with the themes and ideas that arise in such a conversation. The journey of this conversation is to uncover and reveal what to believe in life, how to think about life, and most of all what it all means to us, all.

"But the fact is that religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's atheists - arrogance, blind certainty, a closed-mindedness that's like an imprisonment so complete that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up."

What a powerful statement this way to me when I read it. Most of us, I believe, whether atheist or religious, walk around as prisoners of our own selves. What kinds of complications does such an existence create for us? And what is the source of this type of imprisonment?

"Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what's going on in front of me. Instead of paying attention to what's going on inside of me."

That's something I also experienced during my years in college. I felt like I was going a thousand miles an hour, thinking I was on some great course, and all the while, all of it was destructive to my soul and spirit. I remember coming out of my college experience feeling relieved. Since then, I have had one of the best experiences in life, liberated from the imprisonment that David Foster Wallace is trying to translate in this book.

"In the twenty years since my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand these stakes, and to see that the liberal arts cliche about "teaching you how to think" was actually shorthand for a very deep and important truth. "Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think."

That is exactly what I have come to realize, as well, after my college years. When I was in college, I taught myself how to learn, but when I came out of college was when I really taught myself to learn how to think. David Foster Wallace says that otherwise you are 'totally hosted.' 'Think of the old cliche about the mind being "an excellent servant but a terrible master".'

'And I submit that this what the real, no-s*** value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about. How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out."

Like I said, in very few words David Foster Wallace manages to grab your attention and give your goosepumps all at the same time. He speaks of a phenomena so real, I couldn't help but relate immediately. This is what happens in real life, every day of our lives. This is also a theme we often read about in novels as well. My favorite author, Huraki Murakami, touches on the consequence of such a state of living, revealing suicidal tendencies that we sometimes are oblivious to or even just simply choose to ignore.

'None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital T-ruth is about life before death. It is about making it to thirty, or maybe even fifty, without having to shoot yourself in the head. It is about the real value of real education, which has nothing to do with grades or degrees and everything to do with simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in pain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over.'

'This is water.'

'Which means yet another cliche is true: Your education really is the job of a lifetime, and it commences - now."

I'd like to finish this review with the one word that started it all. Compassion. For it is this sole word that give life to all that is 'water.' It is compassion (and empathy, too) that allows us to slow down, to be aware, to consider the real truths of life. It is only through compassion (and empathy, too) that can see the real and essential truths so hidden in plain sight all around us. It is ability to control how we think and what we think from a higher purpose of living that makes us realize 'This is Water.'

This is a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace to the graduating class of Kenyon College in 2005. Each page consists of one sentence, and for good reason: almost every single sentence deserves its own page. Each sentence needs time to sink in, needs plenty of time for rumination. I found the book especially valuable as a newcomer to the so-called "real world" of post-graduation. DFW discusses how a liberal arts degree is about "teaching you how to think." He posits that we all have the ability (if we have enough self-awareness and energy) to CHOOSE how and what we think. We can choose to think negatively about others and to think that we are the center of the universe, or we can choose to think differently: to give others the benefit of the doubt and realize that nobody really has it all together. He also touches on belief systems: that maybe we should put faith into a higher being/cause/what-have-you because the alternatives (putting faith into money, beauty, power, etc.) simply will never make anyone happy.

Overall, a thought-provoking read, and one that I'd like to add to my shelf. Although I've only read it this one time, I think it's one of those reads that can give you a greater perspective on life, and one that you can learn something new from with each read

I usually don't bother writing reviews but for this one, I had to. For two very opposite reasons. The speech is short and sensational, and I think everybody should read it. The publishing work done for the Kindle version of this "book", though, doesn't feel right. It's being sold as a 144 pages book, but each page has only one sentence. It didn't bother me that much for the reading, but it still does feel like a lame marketing strategy. MUCH MORE IMPORTANT though is the fact that this is not David Foster Wallace's commencement speech. For whatever reason that probably only the publisher understands, words have been changed. The audio is all over the web, the transcription is all over the web, and still what is supposed to be the words of DFW are not. Alterations have been made here and there, which is absolutely not OK to my taste. And with punctations/writing errors. Lame work from the publisher.

Let me preface my own review by offering some insight into the others: most of the poor reviews this book has received have nothing to do with the book's contents; rather, they harp on the formatting and shaping of the text. Focusing on the format of the book and the fact that yes, it is available for free online, shouldn't factor much in a book review, I think, but to this point, it has.

I can see why the publishers formatted it the way they did: to generate recurring sales in that May and June period when most graduations take place, and to make it a pocket-sized, easily consumable text. From a marketing/publishing standpoint this makes perfect sense, and the reviewers hung up on these details seem to be missing the point of the book.

This is why I believe this book deserves 5 stars: any David Foster Wallace follower would be eager, no matter where else the text exists (for free or otherwise), to add to their DFW collection a volume that is so unlike any other he produced. Where his short stories, nonfiction and novels are forever-winding and humanly complex, "This is Water" is a simple masterwork, no less human (and possibly even more so, with its parable-rhetoric) but much less intricate, at least on the most obvious levels. This alone makes the book a welcome addition to any personal library, DFW-focused or not.

The speech itself is warm without being sentimental; it's grounded in reality the way few commencement speeches are, yet it achieves a feeling of inspiration that seems to be, at first thought, highly unlikely, considering the general topic of the speech: surviving the banality of everyday life as a functioning adult.

For those not familiar with Wallace, "This is Water" provides a thoughtful analysis of the realities of adulthood. But for those who have a past with Wallace, the book is a strangely haunting reminder of the principles that drove his writing.

"This is Water" may find itself eventually fallen into that clichéd group of texts given as presents to new grads, though the advice and insight Wallace imparts would be of interest to readers at any stage of life. And as any Wallace fan knows, clichés are there for a reason: they may be molded and generic-sounding, but only because they apply to daily life so universally, not because they are illegitimate and superficial.

It's the same with this book: it may be formatted, shaped and edited into something clichéd and bordering novelty, but the message is so profoundly sweeping and genuine that you would be doing yourself a favor to overlook its commerciality.

I had no idea that this speech was freely available on the web at an earlier time. All I know is that I walked into the philosophy section of a local bookstore today and saw this little white book on the shelf. "What is David Foster Wallace doing in the philosophy section?" ran through my head and I picked it up. I could probably have read the whole book while standing in the aisle, but this is exactly the kind of book I like to own and savor, so I bought it. I work as a production editor, so I particularly appreciate the book's layout and the way it allows you to pause for meaning.

And then I read it while standing in line for the latest iPhone. This irony was not lost on me! "It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars." I laughed out loud. I have often shifted perspective while in these types of retail situations, to see things from others' points of view, and have gotten amazing responses from retailers and customer service representatives. Time and experience are never wasted, no matter how boring, routine, frustrating, or petty it might seem at the time. David Foster Wallace's mind and spirit represent exactly what I do worship--one who was fiercely intelligent and intensely alive. Yes, I am an atheist in matters of religion, but I agree that "There is no such thing as not worshipping. . . . The only choice we get is what to worship." This is what we ask for, from our artists and intellectuals--material to refresh our souls and remind us of why we live. We can only be fortunate that this mind was alive for 46 years and gave us so much spirited writing, in the search for Truth with a capital T.

All this talk of graduation gifts. Please. I refused to attend both my high school graduation ceremony and my college commencement ceremony, precisely because I hate the conventional, didactic kinds of tripe bromides you usually hear at them. Do not reduce this beautiful gem of a book into that. Give it to people you love, but do not throw it at them.

My sister gave me this book about a month ago for my birthday. I had read it a long time ago on the internet, but I'd just scanned over it with mild interest and quickly had forgotten it.

I was a fool, of course, that time I read it. I'd done exactly what Wallace so eloquently warns against in "This is Water." I'd read it while entrapped within the prison of my self-concern. I had read it without full mindfulness, in a rush to move on to other things. And look what I had missed.

It's a beautiful book that reminds us of truths that float around us in many forms (he points out cliches) but that we somehow never seem fully to grasp. Wallace reminds us that if we live unconsciously, according to the default settings that focus on ourselves, we can end up living cynical and bitter lives. He instead urges awareness, so that we may experience even the most banal of experiences as "not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars -- compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things..."

Like I said, it's a beautiful book that I find worth reading over and over, just to remind myself, again, to pay attention.

One more note. I do very much appreciate the book form This is Water takes. The small volume is attractive. The speech is published with one sentence per page which serves to help the reader enact the skills that Wallace so urges in the book: awareness and thoughtfulness. It's a perfect example of form matching content, and even if This is Water is still available for free online, the book is well worth the cost.

Beautiful! It's words for living up to. (DFW would appreciate the ungrammatical syntax of my last sentence.) In this time of uncertainty and fear in the face of a new American administration, it is a life-saving compendium of wisdom for living a life of spiritual empathy and looking at things in a different way. I fall way short on this particular trait myself, but I really admire the man who wrote such stunning words.

At last, a great commencement address published in a thoughtful form; Wallace offered rare wisdom in these brief remarks, and Little, Brown and Co. had the foresight to publish it in a relevant format.

It's a short book, only 134 pages, with one sentence per page which leaves a lot of white space on every page. In other words, the book is for people who think about what they read, which was the essence of Wallace's writing. 'Time' magazine, hardly a font of intellectual wisdom, did have the common sense to list Wallace as one of the most influential novelists in the 1923-2006 era.

This book is an example of what can be accomplished in many less words than a novel, and in a format often dismissed as little more than an "honour" for the person invited to deliver a commencement address. It's the Abraham Lincoln approach; he didn't have a lot to say at Gettysburg in 1863, and the brevity of his remarks was roundly condemned at the time; but, the content has stood the test of time, just as I suspect this book will stand the test of time.

For those in a rush who prefer not to think, may I suggest the Internet version. It's easy to find -- just Google 'David Foster Wallace.' It can be read quickly, it is "nice" and it wont leave a single thought in any speed reader's mind.

This book is for people who like to think, who like to re-examine trite assumptions and question whether habit or intellect offers a greater intellectual stimulus. It's not for everyone, especially not for those so busy rushing through their meaningless days that they refuse to take time to think. It's sometimes said that education is wasted on the young; well, it's also wasted on those who can't take the time to think.

That leaves this as a great book; not necessarily for its content, but because it's content is presented in a format that will encourage thought, introspection and wisdom.

Don't buy it if you're not willing to think

I have very mixed feelings about this little book. On the one hand it prints in full for the first time in book form David Foster Wallace's brilliant 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College. That speech will be remembered as one of the seminal documents of the early 21st century, to be spoken of in the same breath as one of Emerson's essays. Wallace manages to compress into a brief space some stunningly profound insights into cognitive psychology, religion, and humanitarianism--in short, how to live one's life. I don't see how you can read it and not be changed. If you want to begin reading Wallace, this is the place to start.

On the other hand that's all there is in this 137 page book: Wallace's relatively short talk, printed in large type and surrounded by lots and lots of white space. In other words, it's an overgrown greeting card. And it smacks just a little bit of exploitation of Wallace's tragic 2008 death. So if you are willing to pay $25.00 for something you can easily and legally find on the Internet then be my guest. I was at a loss how to rate this book: five starts for the content, and one star for the cheesy presentation. So I compromised on three stars, with the above warnings.

The text of this brief speech is -- as I would expect of DFW -- thoughtful and thought-provoking. DFW distills in very few words what others writers have labored over at great length. His observations and advice are quietly inspiring. This is a terrific graduation speech, and -- also expectedly -- a very unusual one.

Less one star in criticism of whoever thought to dress this 15 minute read up in the guise of a book length poem and slap a $15 price tag on it (hardcover).

This speech is a generous gift delivered by a deeply troubled and pained person of unusual intelligence. And while this is an address to graduates, it seems to me that he speaks, in a way, to try to convince himself too. He says,

"...there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. That is being taught how to think."

He's talking about existence, and the freedom to love. And to love is to rebel against periods of depression and unhappy listlessness and repetition and pain and absurdity, to care about others and to sacrifice. It's a Sisyphean existence. I subscribe to that. The struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart. I think Camus said that.

Yes, the bulk of this essay has been generated multiple times via the Internet. Nonetheless it is worth owning, returning to and benefiting from throughout the years. I have to believe that the people who think this bound edition is a "rip off" must not appreciate this work for the depth and brilliance of Wallace's philosophy. Maybe some are limited to a more two dimensional understanding, such as with a trade industry article that lacks new information. Wallace is/was one of the most brilliant and unpretentious intellectual and philosophical voices of the twenty-first century. This is a lovely volume of a priceless work.

I read this book over and over and over. Brilliant, practical and inspiring. An elegant reminder that we are not the center of the universe and we have no idea what those around us are confronting. I also give this as gifts.

I was recently introduced to the recording of this beautiful and thought provoking commencement speech by DFW and have since revisited it a few times already.. it’s so packed with wisdom. (The kindle book has terrible formatting though)

The negative reviewers on this page are furious that the text has been "brutally mangled" in a one-line-per-page book. That ought to give you a sense of how sacred the text is to people, and how important it is to read.

The negative reviewers are right that this is a near-sacred piece of text, one deserving of your carefulest attention, but for the same reason, they are exactly wrong that the book does the text a disservice. For two reasons:

1. One line per page forces you to slow down, to consider the words more carefully. To pause. Think.

2. The mere fact that the text is in a book changes our approach to it--gives it more weight. Here's William Deresiewicz: "It's not that the text is any different on a screen than it is in a book. It's that we're different, because the medium tunes our nervous systems to a different pitch. We come to the screen to be entertained: we bring it our impatience. We come to the screen to shop: we bring it the expectation that we're going to be pandered to." _This Is Water_ does not pander.

Rather than doing a disservice to the text, this book is an attempt to rescue the text from the dross of the Internet. To prevent people from reading it alongside their microwaved burrito and their online radio. To prevent people from giving it a moment's thought, and then never considering it again.

Everyone should read this awesome book once a week, not just college graduates, it is brilliant, I love anything by David Foster Wallace, but this particular book/ speech really makes you examine your humanity.
highly recommend !!!!!

Seems to be either love or hate with this book. Here's what you need to know:
- Yes, the speech is free online
- No, you don't necessarily need the book version

However, it does make for a great gift (how I received my copy), and that's why I would buy it. Also, plenty of space for taking notes by the text if you're the type that likes to do that (which I am).

What a beautiful book.
It contains great words to live by and is a jolting reminder of what it means to be a living human here on earth.
This book also seems like a stripped-down skeleton key to explain the spirit behind Wallace's dense and intellectually convoluted fiction. He lays out in stark, simple terms the driving moral force behind so many of his stories. I sense it will be an important text to help understand the forthcoming Pale King.
Wallace's death is a tragedy. I am so thankful he left us so much.

I am a member of the Kenyon College class of 2005. I can't even begin to explain how special it is for me to have this text in a published form. Graduating from college is hard, I mean, you leave and now you actually have to deal with yourself. I'm well past that day now but reading this text brings me back like it was yesterday and I am thankful to be able to hold these words and soak them in.

I'm a David Foster Wallace fan so I may be biased, but this is a good showcase of his ability to bring out the bare bones. In this speech he describes a couple commencement speech cliches and -by scraping away the rhetorical flesh, shows us the bare truth behind.

This is an easy read yet its words will stay with you. Let them sink in, there is an alternate way to live that starts with the concepts you will find in this book. The message is ages old but so appropriate for today. I am 59 and I can tell you that what he says here was critical for me to hear.

i'm not going to comment on the text much - you can read it for yourself for free, as others have pointed out - but it's a good, very thoughtful speech that smoothly builds to its points. had i been one of those graduates, i would've felt beyond honored, and it should've received some sort of publication, if not necessarily in this format. d.f.w.'s real feel for his audience (seen in his mccain essay) shines through here.

(when i saw this come in i thought, "why is this being published as one of those tacky grad books that nobody likes receiving & that inevitably end up in double grocery bags of books to be sold to me in my capacity as used book buyer, which i can never buy because nobody wants a used gift book?" however, if it means that more graduates read this instead of the disappointing maria shriver book, then everybody wins.)

The content is marvelous, but DO NOT BUY THE KINDLE EDITION. The typesetting is atrocious.... justified lines with weird word spacing, one word to a line... very poor quality. I asked for a refund and got it.

If you are looking for something to read that will occupy your time for a one-out set amount of time, don't waste your money. If you want something to read that accompanies your coffee and gets you ready for each day... Then by all means, this is a sound investment.

Before buying this book I knew exactly what it was: David Foster Wallace's 2005 Kenyon Commencement speech. I actually read the speech online before I had read any of his books (now I've read them all save for Everything and More). and was hoping they would publish, which they did, and I think they did a very good job. I've recommended the speech to some of my friends and now I'll be able to do one better and give it to them as a gift. It seems silly to give this book a 1 star. Rate on content, not on something unknowable like the motivation of the publishers.

Honestly, I couldn't disagree more with the negative posts. I think this brief, beautiful looking book is a wonderful tribute to David Foster Wallace's brilliant mind. This speech was spread throughout the internet, yes. But I, for one, think this is piece of writing is something worth collecting and pondering. And publishing it in a book form gives it the stature it deserves. That may sound old-fashioned, but even in the internet age, that's still the role of a book publisher. And I am happy to have this on my shelf to be able to hold onto it for years to come.

Nobody claimed this was Infinite Jest(IJ) but if you don't see this reflected in IJ then you are missing the point of both books.
Most DFW fans would know this is free online but the book is a nice format for gifting. I ordered 25 copies to give to family and friends.
Naysayers examine your default setting!

I'm pretty sure DFW, wherever he is, must really be regretting leaving control of his estate to whatever moron decided it would be a good idea to publish his speech one-line-at-a-time, as if it were the next installment of "Chicken Soup for the Soul". The layout substantially alters (for the worse) the impact of the speech, treating each sentence as if it were intended to be a precious little nugget of wisdom, divorced from overall context of the speech as a whole. I guess it's predictable that his heirs would want to cash in, but it's pretty unforgivable that they so brutally mangled his work in the process. Also: I seriously doubt the title is DFW's. "This is Water" is confusingly misquoted and sort of renders the initial anecdote meaningless, and the sub head is rife with the sort of hubris that DFW argues against in the speech itself.) The version that appeared in Best NonRequired Reading 2006 (edited by his friend Dave Eggers, who presumably titled it according to DFW's wishes) was simply "Kenyon Commencement Address" If you want the speech in book form, buy that book at least instead of this three legged baby.
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 (The Best American Series) The actual speech is, by the way, brilliant and moving, which is what makes this edition all the more tragic. (5 *'s for the speech 1 * for the edition itself)

The point of packaging DFW's commencement address (freely available on the web, yes) is to serve as a graduation gift, not as a bogus DFW-oeuvre expander. Outraged that there's only one sentence per page? How many sentences do you think were in the graduation gift bestseller of 20 years ago, "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" by Dr Seuss? Granted, no pictures here to compell sub-literate, drug-addled, and sex-obsessed post-adolescents it's aimed at to turn the page, but still. . . A fine exploration, in compact form, of questions every adult leading Thoreau's life of quiet desperation should/needs to ask him/herself. And it's funny, compassionate, loving, and--knowing now what was to become of Wallace--fundamentally very serious. A beautiful work.

He seems like he wants to say that you need a real religion - Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Bhuddism, but is afraid to actually say that to a group of spoiled, coddled, hard-left leaning college students. But, based only on what he says, I get the impression that he doesn't actually believe whatever it is he believes, enough to come right out and say it.

There is no doubt that the quality of the writing and the content are superb. But, the publisher is misleading when they list the book as 155 pages. There are 3,814 words in this *book* which is equivalent to about 15 pages. The publisher lists it as 155 pages because they *artfully* display only a few lines of text per page.

I would suggest going to YouTube.com and searching for "This is Water" and click the result by "SeeTheGlossary", which should be the #1 result. It's a fantastically filmed video that contains the bulk of what you would read in the book. You can also listen to an audio recording of the entire speech if you click the link by "BraveNewLife1".

You can also simply purchase the book; read it in about 5 minutes; then return to your "digital orders" and request your money back.

I'm all for rewarding the author for his outstanding work. I would gladly send him a few dollars for his work, if I could only find his email address, but I'm not going to give a dishonest corporate publisher my money. Not one cent.

I am a huge DFW fan. This is no "Infinite Jest" friends. I know you could put the entire book on one sheet of 8 inch paper typing paper. DFW would never stand for such a ripoff when alive. Don't give the crappo editors a penny on this scam. One page will have 3-4 short lines on it.

Sorry I've read the reviews that say "not a ripoff" but I'm afraid their arguments do not hold water. Belive me, its a classic ripoff. Heck don't buy it because its a waste of paper and resources if our attempts to protect you from getting screwwwwwwwwd fall on deaf ears.

One can hear David Foster Wallace's speech on Youtube, and so I did as I was reading the book. It's a a book of 137 pages and some pages have only one sentence. It can be read in twenty minutes. A great speech. It's more than a shame that the book has so many unnecessary and unforgiveable errors. I give the book two stars for it's hatchet job, but I give the speech five stars.

I don't normally write reviews, but this one requires an exception. First - this is a beautiful piece of writing. My one star review has nothing to do with the content. However, the publisher is charging ten dollars for this. It's about fifteen minutes of reading, and it can be found for free in a number of places online. Legally.

I'm not sure what possesses people to capitalize, grossly and immorally, off the genius of others, but this is a fine example of that base tendency.

This book contains 1 sentence per page. 139 pages, and 139 sentences. It is a beautiful speech, but do not buy this unless you are one of those people who loves DFW so much that you must have every word he's ever published, posthumously or otherwise.

The entirety of this speech can be read here:

[..]

I wish there was more.

This is a horrible rendition of a wonderful speech. The layout misrepresents his words as aphorism-sized bites, and nothing could be further from the real piece. How can these sentences stand alone on a page?:

p 61

That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense.

p 122

That is being taught how to think.

There are piles of these stand-alone sentences that should have never stood alone. But even reading it in order, first page to last, leaves the sense of the thing messed with terribly. The cadence is as college students reading poetry in their coffee-house meetings. Why format the book in the way it's formatted? For sense? To pre-chew the speech and let me know what to think about it by breaking it up into parts that make an editor's points, not the speechmaker's? It's formatted this way so that it is stretched out to almost 140 pages that can bring in >$10.

This isn't even getting into the censorship of his original speech.

This is a shameful recasting of a fantastic speech. Shameful. For shame!

The most terrible thing is that we see a hint that, in death perhaps as in life, the people who were close to DWF clearly don't get it.

Do not buy this.

DFW's Kenyon address comes in at about 3800 words, the whole thing a simple Google away. How they stretched so few words over 144 pages gives pause and really discredits the whole idea of a "book." As much as I love his work, this would make a good pamphlet, but not a $14.99 hardcover. I'd bet that DFW would think this was a blatant rip-off.

Please, please, don't buy this. The full text of this book is available for free online (at [...] and many other places as well), it's just a transcript of a commencement speech he gave in 2005, and this book stretches that brief text over 144 tiny pages by printing only one sentence per page. The speech is okay, not great. It certainly doesn't deserve shelf space with the brilliant books Foster Wallace published in his lifetime. There is no content other than that freely available transcript in this tiny book, other than some of the most preposterous and enraging promo copy I've ever read on the dust jacket (the callous post-suicide deification has begun hardcore!). I'm all for the posthumous publication of uncollected Foster Wallace material (can't wait for the Pale King!), but this is just ridiculous.

This speech (as well as a lot of other awesome stories, articles, essays, quotes, first-lines, jokes) is included in the 2006 Best American Non-Required reading, which was edited by Dave Eggers.

[...]

Spend less money, and get a lot more out of it!

By the way, the speech is a great speech. You really should check it out.

You can get this speech for free in numerous locations all over the web. The fact that it's being pimped by his estate as a book is a sad cheapening of the legacy of a brilliantly gifted writer. I think his publishers are just pissed that the golden teat ran dry a little early and will manufacture as many additional carts for their DFW gravy train as they possibly can. Cheap. So cheap.