David Foster Wallace

[harryh]

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually

Comments

[joshc]

this is just the worst. news, that is. the speech is hauntingly appropriate.

[evan]

The thing that's always killed me about that speech is the applause when he's talking about SUVs, where he's giving an example of how not to be and the students just eat it up anyway. It's a perfect DFW moment to me, the distress of conveying a (moderately) complicated idea and having it be completely lost on its audience.

(See also: "On the Uses of a Liberal Education as Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students", http://neugierig.org/drop/lite.pdf )

[joshc]

(is there audio of that commencement somewhere?)

[billyfleetwood]

this is the piece from Infinite Jest i was thinking of earlier