James K. A Smith introduced me to David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008). Earlier this year, I began to read Although of Course you End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky. Though not (often) enamored by Lipsky’s interruptions and asides in what are otherwise (edited?) transcripts of his conversations with Wallace, I was caught over and over again in the grip of Wallace’s insights and experiences.
I’ve dipped into other things, and articles about David Foster Wallace. I’m looking forward to reading my copies of Consider the Lobster (a non-fiction collection of essays) and his posthumously published unfinished novel The Pale King (which was released in NZ a month or so ago).
The other day, again via Jamie Smith, I read David Foster Wallace’s commencement address given by him to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College. In fact I’ve now read it a couple of times. You will find it here (the unedited version) and if you do read it, I hope you’ll be as touched as I was. In my case I was moved by both by the discovery of myself (how I am in a supermarket, how I make space for possibilities, or am (on occasion) in a car in traffic) and also in my hope to grow ever more deeply free, and thus more fully human (and the value of that hope in a world that doesn’t naturally value such things).
Here are some excerpts:
“…And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about…
…Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness…
…There are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day…”
He concludes:
“…It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over…
…It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.
I wish you way more than luck.”
If you want to hear Wallace, you’ll find some truly fascinating radio interviews here. Just wonderful to listen to him talking about all manner of things including structure in writing, loneliness, the importance of art, his books, morality / spirituality etc etc. I highly recommend them.
Recent Comments