A graduation speech that's not delivered by a comedian, but that has its moments. David Foster Wallace cuts to the chase at Kenyon in 2005. Really worth the read. Any readers out there go one way or the other on his books?
I read "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" and I think he's sweet. Though I'm hesistant to call myself a big fan cuz he's got such a cult following it's like blasphomy to say you're a fan when you haven't read "infinite jest".
This is a good short story he did in the New Yorker before he died (I think it's an excerpt from his last unpublished novel).
"But sitting here beside this girl as unknown to him now as outer space, waiting for whatever she might say to unfreeze him, now he felt like he could see the edge or outline of what a real vision of Hell might be. It was of two great and terrible armies within himself, opposed and facing each other, silent. There would be battle but no victor. Or never a battle—the armies would stay like that, motionless, looking across at each other, and seeing therein something so different and alien from themselves that they could not understand, could not hear each other’s speech as even words or read anything from what their face looked like, frozen like that, opposed and uncomprehending, for all human time. Two-hearted, a hypocrite to yourself either way."
2 comments:
I read "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" and I think he's sweet. Though I'm hesistant to call myself a big fan cuz he's got such a cult following it's like blasphomy to say you're a fan when you haven't read "infinite jest".
This is a good short story he did in the New Yorker before he died (I think it's an excerpt from his last unpublished novel).
"Good People":
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2007/02/05/070205fi_fiction_wallace
Great story. I think my favorite part was this:
"But sitting here beside this girl as unknown to him now as outer space, waiting for whatever she might say to unfreeze him, now he felt like he could see the edge or outline of what a real vision of Hell might be. It was of two great and terrible armies within himself, opposed and facing each other, silent. There would be battle but no victor. Or never a battle—the armies would stay like that, motionless, looking across at each other, and seeing therein something so different and alien from themselves that they could not understand, could not hear each other’s speech as even words or read anything from what their face looked like, frozen like that, opposed and uncomprehending, for all human time. Two-hearted, a hypocrite to yourself either way."
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