About this title: 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 ...
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Edition: 1st edition
Binding: Hardback
Publisher: Little Brown & Co
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780316068222ISBN:0316068225
Description: New. Only once did 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. The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his gra... read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
ISBN-13:9780316068222ISBN:0316068225
Description: New. 0316068225 *NEW BOOK! * RETURNS ARE NO PROBLEM! We LOVE happy customers. All our orders sent with tracking information. ALIBRIS. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Little Brown & Co
Date Published: 2009-04-14
ISBN-13:9780316068222ISBN:0316068225
Description: NEW. Hardcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780316068222. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780316068222ISBN:0316068225
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
"This commencement address was given the same year I graduated college and I REALLY wish it was given at Syrcause (no offense Jane Goodall). However, DFW definietly had some flawed conclusions and some grand assumptions about individuals. Reading this finally gave me the ability to pin point why I always felt conflicted about DFW's work. It was always intelligent and well crafted, but there was just something a touch off, as if his intelligence gave him the ability to understand everybody, which of course it did not."
"As I came here to post my review of this book, I stumbled onto reviews posted by others. The general perception seemed to be a sense of sadness. Perhaps it's because of what Wallace did ultimately. But I read this speech differently.
I read it as 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."
Dare I say it, but I 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. It doesn't depress me at all. The struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart. I think Camus said that."
"so. it gets five stars because of how terribly sad i still am. i read this online , of course, years and years ago, but i reread it in book form, just to see if anything had been added. it hasnt. just the fact of his death on the flap. id really rather have added material than that fact, wouldnt you? and i also would have liked this to have been delivered at my graduation (i mean, i had quincy jones, i cant complain too much, but still... despite all the good advice in this book, i am a complainer) so, a five star, five gun farewell salute to dfw, from me."
"Wow! An unusual commencement address that rises above the traditional platitudes typically found in these speeches. Wallace makes a powerful connection between what he sees as the real value of a liberal education, open-mindedness, and the well-known quote from Buddha that "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world." I was so impressed with this book that I read it aloud to my Daughter, Kelsey, the night before she entered the US Naval Academy"
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