This Is Water

Philosophy

First published: 2009
Print length: 137 pagesLittle, Brown, 2009

Description

Adapted from David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College, This Is Water considers what education can offer beyond knowledge or professional success. Wallace focuses on the repetitive pressures of adult life, when habit, fatigue, and private frustration make other people seem like obstacles in a world centered on the self. Against that automatic perspective, he proposes attention as a demanding form of freedom: the ability to notice one’s assumptions, imagine lives beyond one’s own, and choose compassion even during ordinary moments. The essay’s conversational directness carries a serious inquiry into isolation, empathy, and the daily work required to remain conscious within a comfortable routine.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Conversational · Direct · Essayistic

Pace

Measured

Tone

Earnest · Intimate · Philosophical · Reflective

Structure

Argumentative

Focus

Argument · Ideas · Voice

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

CommunityFreedomIsolationKnowledge and truthMorality

About David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace was an American novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and professor, best known for Infinite Jest. His work moves between dense, formally experimental fiction and nonfiction that can sound conversational even as it develops intricate arguments. Long, branching sentences, specialized or invented language, shifting voices, and disruptive footnotes are central to his method; he described the notes as a way to interrupt linear narrative while preserving readability and reflecting the texture of experience. Across fiction and essays, Wallace examined entertainment, appetite, self-consciousness, and the habits of irony in a media-saturated culture, returning to the difficulty of sincere communication and the fear of being alone. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster turn cruises, fairs, politics, usage disputes, and public spectacles into comic, morally alert scrutiny. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men uses omissions, fragments, and compromised speakers to probe sexual power and self-deception. What distinguishes Wallace is the pressure he puts on form itself, making digression and excess serve sustained attention to other minds.