Thread 24547878 - /lit/ [Archived: 306 hours ago]

Anonymous
7/14/2025, 1:32:24 AM No.24547878
960px-David_Foster_Wallace
960px-David_Foster_Wallace
md5: bedf1a9d4deff743e18c2f3a7a04da96🔍
Thoughts on DFW's commencement speech "This is Water"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCbGM4mqEVw&list=LL&index=1
Replies: >>24549322 >>24549595
Anonymous
7/14/2025, 1:44:24 AM No.24547908
i am stricken by the fact that some are cursed by language, it diminishes them. they still have no choice but to rely on it, but no matter what they use it to say will be marred by the transmutation of its expression. some are well prepared for this sort of torment in that they only speak what is to be said. but how many of us are constipated with things to express with just a tiny orifice to slap it out? dfw's memories walk with music, and his speech betrays a poetry he'd never be able to write.
Anonymous
7/14/2025, 3:35:07 AM No.24548112
I like that he uses typical liberal whining as examples of how not to think or things that ought not to be dwelled on.
Anonymous
7/14/2025, 5:07:08 AM No.24548270
The thought exercise he talks about around 15:00 is great advice; very helpful for day-to-day mindfulness and mental health, especially in a big city.
Anonymous
7/14/2025, 4:28:03 PM No.24549322
>>24547878 (OP)
one of the goats
Anonymous
7/14/2025, 5:11:06 PM No.24549413
tiresome boomershit
Replies: >>24549595
Anonymous
7/14/2025, 6:54:07 PM No.24549595
>>24547878 (OP)
It's helped me feel a bit better about things in some trying circumstances. >>24549413 is not wrong, but boomers were not always wrong either and DFW was largely right here.

Although I get similar and deeper thoughts when reading Whitman's Song of Myself and the 'universe as a series of roads for the progress of souls' part of Song of the Open Road, desu senpai, so I usually turn to Whitman before Wallaxe.