a poignantly beautiful speech. I would gave it 5 stars but the fact that it is written as a speech, and not for a book. The book format dragged out the writing, display a sentence or two on each page. The format did slow it down, for you to reflect and feel the weight of each line. ( )

I read this in a bookstore and was glad I made that decision -- since it was originally a speech, it was the right length for one sitting. A note about format: it's stretched out over so many pages because there's only one sentence on each page. That made me slow down the pace of my reading and I think I enjoyed the experience more because of it. ( )

As another reviewer said: it's sad and ironic. A few pages from the end he says: "It is about making it to thirty, or maybe even fifty, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head."

The speech by itself is very clearly and sharply written, but I think it's best to be honest and say its content is not very interesting. The claim is that a humanities education doesn't teach you how to think (that, as he says, is the inevitable cliché), but it teaches you what to think about, how to concentrate, how to find your own thoughts, how and when to choose to think, so that you are not overwhelmed by anxiety and solipsism. A more common academic version of that critique of the idea that the humanities teaches people how to think is that it helps people make up their own minds about such things as politics, society, identity, and values, so that people can think independently. Many versions of that kind of claim exist, from Jaroslav Pelikan to Theodor Adorno... but notice Wallace is saying something much simpler and more precarious: he is saying that a successful education in the humanities will let a person tune out the drone of self-serving animal anxiety that drives what he thinks of as ordinary contemporary life. (As in his writing, the examples of contemporary life are such things as shopping and driving home after work.)

Even if he had not committed suicide, that would be a tremendously sad conclusion. Even if we only had "Infine Jest," that conclusion would make the utter ordinariness of the tennis camp even more poignant, because it would be even clearer -- if it needed to be -- that the limited experiences described in that book, as in his others, can be read as more-or-less desperate efforts to avoid a hole of pessimism and depression. And because he did commit suicide, this speech is really tremendously sad.

(Why, I wonder, did the publisher decide not to tell us where he gave the speech? Was the university not prestigious enough to help sell copies? Or was it so prestigious that it might ask for royalties? Anyone know?) ( )

I must admit that I'd never before read anything by David Foster Wallace. So within the first 10 pages or so of reading this book I thought that it was the sad transcribed ramblings of a tired, old man who was on his "way out".

The book format could be a bit off putting, especially if someone paid full price for this in a store. It is a couple hundred word speech, stretched out to 130+ pages for about $15. However, the information it contains is priceless, especially in correlation to DFW's reported suicide.

It is a transcription of a college commencement speech that David Foster Wallace gave in 2005, and it is both scary and brilliant. DFW explains to the graduating class of 2005 the "value of education", which, according to him, is to allow an individual to have control over what and how they think. He states it explicitly while throwing in comments about what is expected: expected from commencement speeches, expected from our selves, and expected from life.

Though the language is not dumbed down, it is clear. We have choices in life, and it is better to be aware when we make them than to be on autopilot.

The author's 2005 commencement address given at Kenyon College (Ohio). Not your usual graduation speech. The book contains only the address, and rather than 144 pages, could probably occupy less than 40.

Excellent for what it is. Yes, I would want my kids to read it. It is worth the reading.

Full text here:
http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_... ( )