a book

This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

Name: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
Rating: 5 (5 reviews)
Author: David Foster Wallace
ISBN: 9780316068222

David Foster Wallace · 2009 · 137 pages

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.

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Peter Attia
“Beautiful gift from my friend @kyle_tman ... I’ve listened more than 100 times to the audio (easy to find: google “DFW this is water”) each time learning something, even incrementally, new and now I’ll add this method of consumption to one of the most important speeches ever given (or at least ever heard by me...). Thank you, Kyle.”↗
Nat Eliason
James Clear
Hugh Jackman
Julie Zhuo