Claremont Insider: David Foster Wallace in His Own Words

Friday, September 19, 2008

David Foster Wallace in His Own Words

Today the Wall Street Journal reprinted a 2005 commencement address by Claremont author David Foster Wallace. An excerpt:

...If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important...then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars--compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things...The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't...