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

by David Foster Wallace

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.

• ISBN10: 0316068225
• ISBN13: 9780316068222
• Publish Date: 1 April 2009
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Little, Brown & Company
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 144
• Language: English

Reviews

[Mercy]

El discurso dado por Foster Wallace en una graduación en el Kenyon College lo tenemos ahora como un libro para que podamos disfrutar de esta maravillosa disertación. Es acerca de la vida y de la parte difícil de ser un adulto pero Wallace nos anima a ver las cosas de otra manera y hacer todo más fácil. Foster habla de una configuración predeterminada que nos hace egocéntricos, pues ya sea consciente o no nos creemos el centro del mundo provocando que el día a día, la cotidianidad nos parezca terrible y sin embargo no hacemos nada para arreglarlo. Olvidamos incluso donde estamos y que hacemos. Un discurso muy llegador, aunque paradójico, pues lamentablemente el autor, que se suicidó un par de años después, no aplico para sí estos consejos.

[mary]

This is a great introduction to Wallace if you want to see what his writing his like. This is a commencement speech he did for a graduating class. It is depressing, brilliant, honest, and heartbreaking. An amazing piece of work that I believe everyone needs to read!