Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Book Review: This is Water by David Foster Wallace

Title: This is Water
Author: David Foster Wallace
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: language

So This is Water isn't really a book; it's really the transcript of a graduation speech Wallace gave at Kenyon College in 2005. My husband is a huge fan of David Foster Wallace, and although he has never tackled Invisible Jest, I think that he wanted to complete the body of Wallace's nonfiction and bought this. The main jist of the speech is that we should not be selfish as adults, and that compassion is more important than the conventional markers for success. We made our older kids sit down and read this with us. One of the hard things is that he talks about suicide at length in This is Water, which was given just three years before his own suicide.

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