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Links: Wikipedia, Book Depository

Links: Wikipedia, Book Depository

Links: Wikipedia, Amazon

Links: Wikipedia, Book Depository

Links: Wikipedia, Book Depository

Links: Wikipedia, Book Depository

Links: Wikipedia, Book Depository

Still probably one of my favourite pieces of writing on this blog…

2007 New Zealand International Film Festival:

Radiant City
Set to the unique guitar soundtrack by Joey Santiago of The Pixies, the reality of planned suburbia on the fringes of the USA’s cities is terrifying. I could feel the cellphone waves in my teeth. Do they really call shopping malls “Power Centers” over there?

This was one of those films where you come away indignant at the West’s greed and opulence but at the same time with some pity those trapped in soccer-work-ballet-shopping cycles. Your wife wants a new home. In the suburbs. With a new kitchen. And she really wants it. And why don’t you want it? And don’t you love her? And the children? Don’t you want the best for the children? How can you be so selfish!

Transcript:

(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I’d advise you to go ahead, because I’m sure going to. In fact I’m gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005. 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, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.

Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I’m supposed to talk about your liberal arts education’s meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let’s talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think. If you’re like me as a student, you’ve never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I’m going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, 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.

(Keep reading the full transcript)

Ref: David Foster Wallace – Commencement Speech at Kenyon University

Terrific full-length version of an interview David Foster Wallace did in the USA with (I think) a German TV program in 2003. It is 84 minutes long but I really recommend watching this right the way through. I think this guy was on to it on a number of levels.

Link: David Foster Wallace Interview (2003) [zdf.de]

UPDATED:
That zde.de link seems to have been wiped out for some reason. It seems zdf.de got a fancy new Adobe Flash interface & lo, death to old links. Here’s the same interview on YouTube in 9 parts.

David Foster Wallace Interview 2003 (Part 1 of 9)

Link: http://youtu.be/N5IDAnB_rns

David Foster Wallace Interview 2003 (Part 2)

Link: http://youtu.be/AlUmT_biDwI

David Foster Wallace Interview 2003 (Part 3)

Link: http://youtu.be/LPIKae5qRwM

David Foster Wallace Interview 2003 (Part 4)

Link: http://youtu.be/P7ts3iKppnA

David Foster Wallace Interview 2003 (Part 5)

Link: http://youtu.be/xx7qMU0f4ts

David Foster Wallace Interview 2003 (Part 6)

Link: http://youtu.be/ayQ1vihLcGc

David Foster Wallace Interview 2003 (Part 7)

Link: http://youtu.be/eI0HhPD38_A

David Foster Wallace Interview 2003 (Part 8)

Link: http://youtu.be/5GZWGFic1Ns

David Foster Wallace Interview 2003 (Part 9)

Link: http://youtu.be/vaWdfDXRDyA