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