#233 | Morning, Boys. How’s the Water?—The Life-Changing Importance of David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Commencement Speech ‘This Is Water’
Quick SUMMARY:
Douglas Vigliotti explores David Foster Wallace's non-fiction work "This Is Water," originally a 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College. Vigliotti delves into Wallace's life, his literary impact, and the speech's key themes: awareness, compassion, and the power of choice, underscoring the importance of recognizing the "totally obvious" aspects of life, being open-minded, and consciously deciding what holds meaning. In short, what does 'learning how to think' really mean? This episode is sure to leave a lasting impact.
Listen to the episode:
*Subscribe to The Books for Men Newsletter, a monthly round-up of every episode with full book and author info, all the best quotes, and newsletter-only book recommendations!
TOPICS COVERED IN the EPISODE:
Intro to the Episode (00:09) - Douglas Vigliotti introduces the podcast and the book "This Is Water" by David Foster Wallace.
Author Background (01:17) - Discussion of David Foster Wallace's life, his major works, and his influence as a writer.
Commencement Speech Context (02:28) - Overview of Wallace's commencement speech at Kenyon College that inspired "This Is Water."
Key Themes of the Book (03:41) - Vigliotti explains the book's focus on awareness, compassion, and conscious living.
Takeaway One: Disregard for the Obvious (05:14) - Wallace emphasizes the importance of recognizing the obvious truths in our daily lives.
Takeaway Two: Be Less Sure of Yourself (08:58) - Discussion on the dangers of dogmatism and the need for open-mindedness.
Takeaway Three: Choosing Meaning (10:02) - Wallace encourages listeners to consciously decide what holds meaning in their lives.
Conclusion and Call to Action (12:53) - Vigliotti wraps up the episode, encouraging subscriptions and feedback for the podcast.
READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to “Books for Men”, a podcast to inspire women to read and bring together men who do. So this week I have another non-fiction book to share with you. It is a short book at only 137 pages, but it reads significantly shorter than that, and I will get to that momentarily. It is called “This Is Water” by David Foster Wallace. Before I jump into my larger takeaways, the author, and what it is about, first, let me just quickly remind you that I have a new book out and it's called “Aristotle for Novelists: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story”. And if you're interested in checking that out, then you can head over to AristotleforNovelists.com. The link for that will be in the show notes. All right. So who is the author and what is this book that I am sharing with you today? So he's the author of nine books, I believe. Three of them are novels. His debut was in 1987, “The Broom of the System”, and then his masterpiece was in 1996, “Infinite Jest”.
01:17 – That is a book that I am looking at right now on my bookshelf. It's a book that I have not read yet, and it's one that has been sitting in that tubby red pile for a very long time. And one might be asking why? And it's just because it's so long and it's dense, and I just haven't found the time to put it into my reading schedule yet. It will take me probably a few weeks to read at least, and that means I can't read anything else. So that's why it's taken me so long to dive into it. I have read a bunch of his short story collections, some of his essays, and of course, the book that I am sharing with you today. He was also a creative writing teacher at two small liberal arts colleges in Illinois, Emerson and Pomona. He's been heralded as one of the most influential and innovative writers in pretty much the late 20th or early 21st century. Sadly, I'm referring to him in the past tense because he died via suicide in 2008, succumbing to a lifelong battle with a major depressive disorder.
02:28 - And actually, that third novel came out posthumously. So it was called “The Pale King”, and it was a few years after his death. It was a work in progress, and they decided to publish it as is to continue with his legacy. All right. So if he has all this great work, why am I sharing the book that I am sharing with you today? “This Is Water”. And basically, in 2005, he was asked to give a commencement speech to the graduating class of Kenyon College. And what resulted was the book that I am sharing with you today. This is water and it originally was a speech. So it's not your typical rah-rah inspirational commencement speech, to say the least. But perhaps it's even better and more poignant. And that's why I wanted to share it with you today. So you don't even have to actually buy this book. You can, I believe, listen to it on YouTube or even find it reprinted somewhere on the internet. It's all over the place. It will only take you 15 or 20 minutes to read in its entirety, but the book lays it out nicely, emphasizing sentences and passages by giving them their own page.
03:41 - This is why I said at the top that yes, it's around 137 pages, but it reads significantly shorter. So in true David Foster Wallace fashion, as I mentioned just moments ago, he flips this commencement speech on its head and he challenges a lot of cliches of the actual genre, but at the same time proves them to be true, which is like this really interesting way to have a speech or write an essay. I should say he uses humor and sarcasm and intellect and practicality and all of the things that he's well known for in his prose as a whole. And he delivers a truly memorable speech. And it's why the speech was published into its own book, and also why it's shared so widely around the internet. It really tries to tackle two major questions, and that is one. How do we keep from going through adult life unconsciously and comfortably, entrenched in our own habits, and how do we remove ourselves from the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion for ourselves and others? When I think about this book's message specifically, I feel like it is such an important read for modern times because of the polarity that we experience on a cultural level, that achieving compassion for people is tough sometimes, and I think it's a worthy pursuit in its own right.
05:14 - And this is something that David Foster Wallace is sharing in this speech when he could be telling these young graduates anything about life. This is the topic he chooses to highlight, I think. Deservingly so because when I think of anything like career progression or anything of that nature, there's a layer above that and it's called life and how to live it. And perhaps there's no greater skill to be learned than how to treat yourself and how to treat other people around you. And sometimes, as we get engulfed in our own ideologies and ways of thinking about things, it just becomes harder to have compassion for others. This is why this is a really special speech. And there are three big takeaways that I think this speech has. And I'm going to share them with you with a couple of quotes that illustrate the points. David Foster Wallace was trying to make. So the first one is a disregard for the obvious. And it goes hand in hand with the title, “This Is Water”. He starts the whole thing off with this short little story.
06:28 - He writes or says, “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, morning, boys, how's the water? And the two young fish swim on for a bit. Then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, what the hell is water?” And what he is referring to here is the obvious blatant disregard for what is most important and most pertinent and right in front of us every single day. It's interesting because Charlie Munger, the legendary investor Warren Buffett's right-hand man. Of course, he has a book called “Poor Charlie's Almanac”. It's one I might end up sharing with you on this podcast at some point. And in it there is an idea or a quote: “It's better to remember the obvious than it is to understand the esoteric”. And I think on face value, this is just something that is easy to comprehend, but it's so much harder to do in practicality. Or it's like.
07:35 - David Foster Wallace continues, later on in the speech, he says, “If your complete freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time talking about, I'd ask you to think about fish and water and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.” And then continues and illuminates this even further later on when he says, “Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff to get lost in abstract thinking, instead of simply paying attention to what's going on in front of me, instead of paying attention to what's going on inside of me.” And just to hammer this home because it's something that he hammers home in the speech at the end, he wraps this idea up when he says, “It is about the real value of a real education, which has nothing to do with grades or degrees and everything to do with simple awareness. Awareness of what is so real and essential. So hidden in plain sight all around us that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over. This is water. This is water.”
09:03 - Now that brings me to the second major takeaway of this speech. And that is to be less sure of yourself. He has this great little story in the book about a religious dogmatism and an atheist sitting at a bar together, and they're having this conversation, and they're talking about whether one believes in God or not. And the religious person asks the atheist, have you ever prayed before? And the atheist is like, no, of course not. And he's like, actually, there was this one time when I was stuck in a snowstorm on the side of the road, and I just prayed to God that I wouldn't die in this snowstorm and I would be able to live, and yada, yada, yada. And then the story goes on and he goes. Moments later, three Eskimos came walking down the street, and they were able to pick me up and bring me in, you know, help me out or whatever. And of course, the religious guy says to him, well, now, do you believe in God? And the atheist goes, of course not.
10:02 - I just got lucky that these people came by. And why he shares this story is to show how two different people construct meaning out of an experience in two completely different ways. He goes on to hammer this home with a quote that I pulled and said, “The fact is that the religious dogmatism problem is exactly the same as the story's atheist—arrogance, blind certainty, a closed-mindedness that's like an imprisonment so complete that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.” And that leads me to the final takeaway of this speech. And it's perhaps the most actionable, or at least the most inspirational, hopeful part of the speech, I would say. And that is, you have the power to choose what has meaning in your life. That is your choice. And learning how to think, which is what he says college is supposed to prepare you to do, is actually that. And he illustrates it in many ways. But with this quote, particularly, “Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to, and to choose how you construct meaning of experience. Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”
11:46 - And he goes on to say, “This, I submit, is the freedom of real education, of learning how to be well adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.” And I think that this is just such a powerful message, one that I wish everybody took the time to truly grapple with and I hope you will go and read this speech or book, or listen to it, or what have you, because I truly do think it will be impactful for you because, like David Foster Wallace writes in this book, “Everybody worships. The only choice is what to worship.” It's worth it to ask yourself, what am I worshipping? Am I worshipping money and things? Am I worshipping my body and beauty? Am I worshipping power? Am I worshipping intellect? Because whatever you worship has the ability to make you feel like you're not enough. It has power over you in a sense.
12:56 - All right. So I'm going to wrap this up. That's all I've got. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. If you did. I want to remind you to please click that subscribe button or take two seconds to rate the podcast because in doing so, you are inspiring more men to read. That is how we get it in front of more eyeballs and ears. So please go do either one of those two things. Also, I'd love to hear what you think about this episode or any of the episodes. And in that case, there are two ways to connect with me, either on Instagram @DouglasVigliotti. It's the only social media that I have or via my website DouglasVigliotti.com. As I mentioned at the top of this episode, I do have a new book out. It is titled “Aristotle for Novelists: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story”. And if you're interested in that, you could find out more about it on the website AristotleforNovelists.com. And lastly, I want to thank you so much for tuning in and listening. If you want more information on this podcast, which includes signing up for the monthly newsletter, then all you have to do is visit the website BooksforMen.org.
