real freedom

"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. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."

david foster wallace (Ithaca, NY, 1962-Claremont, CA, 2008), excerpt from a transcription found at marginalia.org of the 2005 Kenyon College Commencement Address, Gambier, OH, May 21, 2005


Further reading:

David Foster Wallace, Influential Writer, Dies at 46 (The New York Times)

The Salon Interview: David Foster Wallace (Salon)

David Foster Wallace at The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, Rolling Stone, Playboy


Note: An adapted version of the same commencement speech was printed in the Books section of The Wall Street Journal

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death of a young american poet

David Foster Wallace was found dead in his California home on Friday. He was the author of The Broom of the System (1987), Girl With Curious Hair (1989), A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (1997) and Infinite Jest (1996). In his writing he captured the contradictions and absurdities of present day America, ultimately unveiling a nation obsessed with wealth and pleasure. "If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly", he said once. He was not preaching. He just noticed something may be not quite right in America. "Among people my age, even those who belong to a well-off class who has never suffered any type of discrimination, there's a feeling of discomfort, a profound disconnection and sadness", he said.

Going back to his literary legacy is the best tribute we can pay him. The infinite jest lives on.


Further reading:

Novelist David Foster Wallace found dead (AP)

Postmodern Writer Is Found Dead at Home (The New York Times)

The Howling Fantods

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