David Foster Wallace Commencement Address

[rorosen]

<p>the value of the totally obvious among other things
from the author of Infinite Jest</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html[/url]”>http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[rorosen]

<p>wow, ro, what a great speech that was! I always enjoy your dark yet funny comments. Thanks for the link.</p>

[asteriskea]

<p>“wow, ro, what a great speech that was! I always enjoy your dark yet funny comments. Thanks for the link.”</p>

<p>Ahem, I flunked speed reading so I did need a few minutes to peruse it before posting - loved the last bit:</p>

<p>

None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.</p>

<p>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>Oh, yeah - Thanks for posting. :)</p>

[rorosen]

<p>asteriskea, by following my very first(undeleted) threadstarter with a template of gratitude and self-appreciation i wasn’t displaying my congenital impatience but rather engaging in a conversation with myself and making an oblique commentary on the text of the speech which you of course immediately understood once you read it. I myself am a (pre-global warming)glacially slow reader…</p>

<p>Wasn’t that a great speech though?</p>

[frazzled1]

<p>Thank you rorosen, you’ve rescued my day by posting this! (I actually had a mind-numbing experience at the grocery store this morning.) I love what I’ve read of Mr. Wallace, though so far that’s only been two collections of essays. I keep saving “Infinite Jest” for when I think I’ll have time to do nothing but read, and of course that never materializes.</p>

<p>He is one smart, funny guy.</p>

[rorosen]

<p>funny or maybe not so funny you should mention your mind-numbing experience as I have just returned from Arbus-mart where I was simply astonished by the ugliness of the human race. My wife, who is all things divine, was as usual able to help me find the good behind appearances. Everyone seemed so tired, beaten down,… well-fed yet unhealthy. You see how this ties in with the commencement speech. How well would Wallace’s advice have served to hold off the grocery store frazzle were you able to wind back time and return there to re-live the events? </p>

<p>Perhaps if you break a leg reaching for a can of nacho beans while next at Arbus-Mart, you might be given the time to do nothing but read.</p>

[dstark]

<p>It’s a fantastic speech.</p>

<p>I don’t think a liberal arts education is necessary. It is self-serving and arrogant to imply that it is.</p>

<p>I love the ending.</p>

[garland]

<p>I read this in an anthology a couple months ago. I really love it.</p>

[rorosen]

<p>garland, can you name the anthology?</p>

[rorosen]

<p>wow, just after asking above question, on a hunch(since Eggers introduced the latest edition Of Infinite Jest) I went to the Nonrequired Reading right over there by the couch, my daughter is reading it, and Lo, there it was, Right??</p>

<p>Ask and ye shall find it wasn’t necessary to ask,…or was it?</p>

[jazzymom]

<p>

Truth is about life BEFORE death.

</p>

<p>What a simple but profound statement. I like this guy.</p>

[mommusic]

<p>best “commencement” address I have ever read or heard!</p>

[garland]

<p>Yup, rorosen, that was the one. I love Eggers’ collections.</p>

[asteriskea]

<p>rorosen, I am so glad you did ask, and hope you keep on asking - because, of course, l usually do wind up learning the hard way - I had a spring in my step the whole day yesterday. </p>

<p>

It’s easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people’s two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy’s interpretation is true and the other guy’s is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person’s most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice.

</p>

[rorosen]

<p>this before I go
shovel the overnight snow
and bring in cold logs,…</p>

<p>

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.</p>

<p>That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

</p>

<p>This speech has the ring of improvisation, of something not first assembled on paper, but spoken like a coach at halftime. Now let’s get out there and shovel the world!</p>

[pennypac]

<p>This commencment address showed up on another thread quite a long time ago. I believe it had to do with an analysis of the differences one might find between a liberal arts college education and university training, or whether there was any difference at all. In fact, if memory serves, dstark participated in the debate.</p>

<p>Here’s the thread:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=50032&page=4[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=50032&page=4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[xiggi]

<p>“your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.”</p>

<p>A message that will not be lost on the few who benefitted from an “arrogant and self-serving” eye-opening experience.</p>

[mammall]

<p>DFW is the best</p>

[pennypac]

<p>You’re the man, xiggi!</p>