<p>What I find more deeply “chilling” than anything in DFW’s Kenyon commencement speech - which I think contains more of real value, and is more inspiring and life-affirming, than 100 of your typical commencement speeches - are the statistics on suicide. In the most recent year for which statistics are available, the number of individuals in this country who killed themselves was over 32,000. That is thousands upon thousands - enough to populate a good-sized town - of family members, neighbors, others in our communities, each of whom decided that that their life was no longer liveable and reached for what, at the time, seemed to be the only available solution.</p>
<p>I thought the commencement speech was wonderful, really so much in it that will stick in my mind for a long time (unlike most commencement speeches).</p>
<p>I only meant by my comment that, in light of recent events, it contained comments that could be seen as a kind of foreshadowing, or at least reflect the ongoing struggle he was having with depression.</p>
<p>I noticed that there is a bit of difference between the transcription of the Kenyon address and the one from the WS J.</p>
<p>wsj
</p>
<p>transcription ( I have seen this linked to in other places on the web; as the name indicates, this seems like someone who transcribed the speech from a recording, including coughs and indecipherable words). I like the transcription better.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.</p>
<p>It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:</p>
<p>“This is water.”</p>
<p>“This is water.”</p>
<p>It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand clich</p>
<p>My older daughter has been a fan of his for years and just as she left to start college I started reading his essays and then the news of his death . . . it’s terrible to discover a writer with such lively ideas and language at the same time that he ends his life. What a terrible loss. We read the Kenyon commencement in the WSJ - I cut it out and have it on my desk and find myself returning to it .</p>
<p>More stuff keeps appearing and this site (which I posted a link to a while back) seems to do a good job of keeping up with it all and collecting the various links:</p>
<p>I was thinking of picking up Infinite Jest about this time last year, but the size of it ended up deterring me. </p>
<p>Now I find myself stumbling back to this thread quite a bit. There’s something intriguing not only in his writing, but also in his suicide. </p>
<p>As pointed out the tone and content of his commencement speech was a little scary, but even going back to the charlie rose interview posted here, he ended with a remark that he’s not getting ready to jump off a building yet.</p>
<p>I read the Rolling Stone piece in the magazine over the weekend while on vacation. It’s just a heartbreaking read. We have a family member who is similarly struggling with depression and anxiety disorder, and the frustration of trying new treatment after new treatment is just overwhelming. It sounds like that’s what happened here, after a very long and difficult struggle. RIP.</p>
<p>As an off-topic aside, why does every online article have this obsession with allowing “user comments”? This function too often results in the inane and/or disrespectful drivel you can find in the online Rollling Stone piece.</p>
<p>What I found particularly “heartbreaking” in the Rolling Stone piece were the quotations from DFW’s mother: what a mix of love, compassion, admiration, and sorrow.</p>