This is Water
August 7, 2013 12:40 PM   Subscribe

 
Transcript (PDF)
posted by filthy light thief at 12:55 PM on August 7, 2013 [5 favorites]


Jeez.

I always wondered about his seeming turn towards Christianity when he taught at ISU. Perhaps he was looking for something outside himself to worship.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:16 PM on August 7, 2013


...two comments in and we have DFW bashing. I think this is one of the most genuinely compassionate writing I've ever read/heard. I think about it often when frustrated by crowds and tedium. It's essentially 'be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle" in a different package, but it speaks to me.
posted by sweetkid at 1:18 PM on August 7, 2013 [8 favorites]


I always wondered about his seeming turn towards Christianity when he taught at ISU. Perhaps he was looking for something outside himself to worship.

That's a pretty reductionist take on a complicated subject, bro.

Since the speech and text are copyrighted and sold, I'd say highlighting youtube videos like this is just a good way to get them removed by claim of the copyright holder (The David Foster Wallace Literary Trust). This post will consist entirely of a dead link before too long. Not great for the longevity or usefulness of metafilter, in my opinion.
posted by mattbucher at 1:19 PM on August 7, 2013 [2 favorites]


Who's bashing what?

I'm talking about what he said in the speech about worshiping your own intellect.

I took the time on the speech, read his essays about finding comfort in his church friends, and try to form some kind of picture.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:22 PM on August 7, 2013 [2 favorites]


I really like DFW, but this is turning into Desiderata for the 21st century. Just once I want to hear a version where the young fish call the old fish a senile old fart and go off to be eaten by a shark.
posted by Grangousier at 1:23 PM on August 7, 2013


Furthermore. I am a huge fan and I'm genuinely interested in his life and thoughts.

When I read The View from Mrs. Thompson's, I genuinely wondered why he returned to Christianity.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:26 PM on August 7, 2013


I don't "get" DFW or the hype around the commencement speech, but i didn't like being a Kenyon student either. *shrug*
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:33 PM on August 7, 2013


DFW is one of those middle-class icons whose reputation is so filtered through the many, many, many, many, many people who analyze him and talk about him and explain him and reduce him that by the time he actually gets through to me, I find myself nearly incapable of appreciating him. He's like Radiohead: I'm so paralyzed by everything I know about him pre-approach that all I can do is parse him and go, "Yep, that's in keeping with what I've heard. Yep, that is too. Yep, there's another one."

The only two exceptions, for me, are his essay Shipping Out!, and this speech, both of which strike me as excellent and original. This speech is slowly becoming part of the canon, referenced by so many people that it's beginning to disappear wholesale out of my head, but this recording of it helps ground it once more.

I don't think "David Foster Wallace was looking for something other to worship besides himself" is a bash. Wallace was fascinated with/disturbed by notions of what we occupy our headspace with and what we do with ourselves, and his academic/intellectual backing wrapped into this along with everything else he encountered. He was more than a little bit self-loathing in that regard.
posted by Rory Marinich at 1:42 PM on August 7, 2013 [3 favorites]


I don't think "David Foster Wallace was looking for something other to worship besides himself" is a bash

Of course it wasn't a bash. It was in the speech.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will
need ever more power over othersto numb you to your own fear.
Worship your intellect, being seen assmart, you will end up feeling stupid,
a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidiousthing
about these forms of worship is not that they're evil orsinful, it'sthat
they're unconscious. They are default settings.


It seems clear to me that in the speech he is saying you cannot worship the material, or anything fleeting. You have to worship something eternal, something that cannot desert you. Such as a Christian god

Lets please not turn this into whether I was bashing him.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:46 PM on August 7, 2013


Lets please not turn this into whether I was bashing him.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:46 PM on August 7 [+] [!]
Eponysterical!
posted by BobbyVan at 1:51 PM on August 7, 2013 [4 favorites]


Fuck it. It was a bash.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:51 PM on August 7, 2013 [2 favorites]


Sorry I think I over stated when I said "bash." I apologize. I just think his point was more that we ALL worship ourselves, we're all the center of our own experience.

I don't think he meant "so turn to a Christian god" though. Even if he had Christian tendencies eventually himself, I didn't read that in the speech or as his advice. Open to your thoughts there.

Anyway, sorry again for talking about bashing.
posted by sweetkid at 1:56 PM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


I don't think he meant "so turn to a Christian god" though.

I'm drawing outside stuff from his essay The View from Mrs. Thompson's about gathering with his church friends after 9/11. When it was published it created a lot of stir that he attended church.

I don't think he was proselyting, but I think he was looking for something, and for him at that time it was Christianity.

Also thanks.
posted by Ad hominem at 2:00 PM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


I don't think he was proselyting, but I think he was looking for something, and for him at that time it was Christianity.


I think that makes a lot of sense, and adds something to my reading of the speech. It's a possibility.

Also you're welcome, I'm not usually that strident. But DFW threads are starting to go the way of I/P and cat declawing.
posted by sweetkid at 2:06 PM on August 7, 2013


Having never heard of this guy before, and feeling sorry someone that wise has been lost, as all are in the end... I'm very thankful for this thread, and the immensely useful (for me, at this time) packet of wisdom. I'm hopeful there is more to find saved on the net and elsewhere.

I see no element of religious evangelism in it... just an old fish letting the new fish know about water in a useful (to them, at their stage of life) way.
posted by MikeWarot at 2:11 PM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


Fuck it. It was a bash.

Argumentum ad nauseam got you down? Four out of five rhetoricians prescribe Epitrope!

Epitrope: for when Ecphonesis just isn't enough.
posted by Celsius1414 at 2:11 PM on August 7, 2013 [3 favorites]


Since the speech and text are copyrighted and sold, I'd say highlighting youtube videos like this is just a good way to get them removed by claim of the copyright holder (The David Foster Wallace Literary Trust). This post will consist entirely of a dead link before too long. Not great for the longevity or usefulness of metafilter, in my opinion.

Just as an aside, this isn't how takedowns on YouTube work. They don't get 'flagged' because of views or an increase in traffic. If the owner of the content has already claimed it as their own, any re-uploads or copies of the content will generally be treated as if the owner themselves uploaded it, and any revenue from ads will be sent to the owner. If the owner chooses to issue takedowns by default, then the video would be rejected quickly after it's uploaded, not after it reached some threshold of views.
posted by averageamateur at 2:34 PM on August 7, 2013


Most of the time "church friends" was his euphemism for AA friends. He wasn't too open about his past as far as substances were concerned, so he just swapped in "church" for "AA." FWIW
posted by nevercalm at 2:36 PM on August 7, 2013 [14 favorites]


Oh I never considered that.
posted by Ad hominem at 2:38 PM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


Just as an aside, this isn't how takedowns on YouTube work.

That wasn't exactly what I meant. Bringing wider attention to copyright-infringing videos (by posting them to metafilter) is more likely to bring them to the attention of the copyright holders, who will flag (or ask YouTube to remove) them. Case in point: the video done by TheGlossary based on this very speech. That video received 4 million views before being removed by the copyright holder.
posted by mattbucher at 2:51 PM on August 7, 2013




Thanks, mattbucher. If someone wants to see a working version of that earlier link, which is a shortened version of the speech with video imagery, here it is. I was delighted to find the full speech.
posted by bearwife at 3:08 PM on August 7, 2013


So something that has to be highlighted is that this is an occasional piece, and that DFW'S here is adhering fairly closely to the rules for a piece for this sort of occasion - which is to say, he's trying to give more or less optimistic advice meant to in some small way help youngish people understand where they've been and where they're going.

So there's sort of two stages to the message of this piece. the first is the argument that any available foundation for a life can't rest on individual features of the self, because the self, as a thing that's small and inconsequential and basically always-already rotting, is absolutely inadequate to the task of providing a foundation (or I suppose in his language, it's something that can't successfully be worshipped).

DFW proposes that one necessarily must find something else. The something else he talks about here is on the one hand respect for the kaleidoscopic alterity of the world - it's sheer not-youness - and on the other hand a respect for how others suffer, as the self suffers, and a desire for mutual respect (genuine respect, the type where you continually acknowledge that others have very good reasons to do the things that they do, and that we shouldn't just assume that they're idiots or whatever).

But here's the deal: when DFW wasn't writing within a genre and for an occasion that demands wise optimistic advice, he produced works that (to my eye, at least) continually stressed how respect for alterity and the inexpressible complexity of the present, and the concomitant demand to serve others, to at the very least not make their suffering worse, is itself totally inadequate, incapable of serving as a foundation for anything. That we are left, like Gately in Infinite Jest, worshipping the literal ceiling - absurdly, maybe the closest thing to a higher power we have available for us in a world shot through in every part by oblivion.

"This is water" is the best thing we've got, but ultimately it isn't anything either.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:10 PM on August 7, 2013 [4 favorites]


Could we put a reference to DFW in the FAQ?
posted by parmanparman at 3:20 PM on August 7, 2013


Now I'm really interested in whether DFW was a churchgoer.

Seems like Christians claim he was a devout churchgoer.

According to This guy. He said in Details that he failed to pass the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults to become a catholic twice and eventually ended up at a Mennonite.

I don't know what to believe.
posted by Ad hominem at 3:31 PM on August 7, 2013


DFW is one of those middle-class icons

I wonder why you even include "middle-class" in a statement like this. What function does it serve? Like "middlebrow" it always seems to signal imminent intellectual douchbaggery.
posted by bleep-blop at 3:49 PM on August 7, 2013 [3 favorites]


DFW is one of those middle-class icons

Yeah, I've been trying to figure out what definition of "middle class" applies to a guy who wrote stylistically experimental high-lit fiction noted for its degree of difficulty, including short stories that collapse into their own footnotes and an 1,100-page magnum opus that even its most ardent fans (myself included) will readily confess takes maybe 200 pages to truly get into and is definitely not for everyone. I mean, Wallace's most accessible work consisted of expanded Harper's essays.

What in the name of James O. Incandenza does "middle class" mean in this context? And if the actual word being grasped for was "middlebrow," what strain of contemporary literature constitutes the brow higher than David Foster Motherfucking Wallace? Sound poetry? Untranslated French litcrit? Reissues of Ulysses?
posted by gompa at 4:28 PM on August 7, 2013 [10 favorites]


The implication is that anyone who likes DFW doesn't actually like DFW, but is instead using Wallace as a signpost of their status as someone who reads Serious Things. It's just that Wallace is someone who everyone (or at least, everyone who matters, right?) knows, and so therefore he can't really be Serious, but instead must be a fakeup of Seriousness, aimed at the pretensions of the foolish middle classes.

It's rhetorically effective for Rory to deploy this particular jab, because right now here in America we're all going around in mortal fear, just, utter absolute terror, that someone somewhere might think we're pretentious.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:48 PM on August 7, 2013 [5 favorites]


Forgot to add: we're also terrified that we might be like other people, and that the things we read and do and think might not be unique, and so Rory's jab is doubly effective.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:52 PM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


'Middle class' isn't necessarily a putdown here. Frowner had an interesting comment on that in a previous thread on DFW vs. Bret Easton Ellis.
posted by postcommunism at 6:31 PM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


Actually, I just want to say that middle-class, as far as I understand it to be used by my generation, is beginning to mean less of the fear of being a hipster/indie kid who buys all their clothes from Urban Outfitters and frequently name drops Kierkegaard and more the political science definition that describes economic station and culture.

Part of this I want to say is because we are the generation that rallied behind Obama and had Occupy soon after (I take no credit whatsoever; I'm solidly chattering class). We love talking about this shit. A lot of us are reading Marx (or at least are reading about Marx). The other reason is that for most people to have the critical background necessary to parse and to enjoy DFW, college comes into the picture, likely with a major near and around the humanities. The crowd that enjoys DFW can be defined by their mindful and informed choice on the kinds of media they chose to consume. Conscious consumption that approaches neurosis is also a major theme in Infinite Jest. It's not that DFW can't be enjoyed by someone who doesn't fit that criteria but it seems like there's a specific demographic who can identify with him as someone who also grew up in the suburbs and has an academic pedigree that predisposes you to that kind of mindful selection. I seriously doubt Rory holds anti-intellectualism as a value given his previous commentary and that's a necessary principle in every criticism in calling out pretension.

I can only guess that Rory's identifying himself with the middle class here in order to offer context for his opinion. When he says he enjoys a couple of DFW essays, it's not to reject the middle-class but actually to embrace it. Identifying with it leads to him explaining the friction in not enjoying most of DFW's oeuvre but feeling that he should. Maybe I've got him all turned around on this but that, at least, makes sense with my image of Rory as a commenter and my understanding of the crowd who reads DFW,
posted by dubusadus at 7:46 PM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


Is there a grease monkey script that turns on the footnotes to some of these comments?
posted by Edward L at 9:07 PM on August 7, 2013


I'm surprised this hasn't been posted before. I'm addicted to this speech and listen to it regularly. It speaks to the very core of me. There's a lot of very practical, very useful themes throughout, such as the practice of mindfulness and its connection with compassion. This is the only DFW I've read before, but for it alone I have a lot of affection for him and am deeply appreciative he took the time to make this.
posted by scunning at 9:46 PM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


He wasn't too open about his past as far as substances were concerned

He just cold lied to interviewers when they asked him about his research for Infinite Jest, saying that he just hung out around a halfway house talking to people, and went to some open AA meetings to get the atmosphere. At the time, I thought, bullshit - no way could he write some of the relevant passages unless he had experience being seriously strung out in one way or another.
posted by thelonius at 12:17 AM on August 8, 2013 [1 favorite]


He just cold lied to interviewers when they asked him about his research for Infinite Jest, saying that he just hung out around a halfway house talking to people, and went to some open AA meetings to get the atmosphere. At the time, I thought, bullshit - no way could he write some of the relevant passages unless he had experience being seriously strung out in one way or another.

Other writers who knew him in the early 90s have frequently talked in interviews about DFW going to AA. Mary Karr immediately comes to mind in this context. She has also been pretty peevish about Wallace's wholesale appropriation of AA meeting experiences, interactions, and characteristics of fellow AA members' to the novel (but then she is pretty dramatic about everything, so take that with whatever amount of salt you want considering how she's turned her own difficult childhood and family weirdness into successful memoirs).
posted by aught at 8:29 AM on August 8, 2013


I'll confess that I didn't know anything about DFW until after he died, but he has been growing on my over the years. Maybe I make more out of it than it deserves, or I'm slow on the uptake, but I learn something new each time I listen to it this speech again.
posted by dgran at 11:38 AM on August 8, 2013


Is there a grease monkey script that turns on the footnotes to some of these comments?
posted by Edward L at 12:07 AM on August 8
[+] [!]


There's GraphFi, which is close to that.
posted by oceanjesse at 2:40 PM on August 8, 2013


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