David Foster Wallace on Life and Work (unabridged)
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/books/review/Bissell-t.htm...
Nicer (IMHO) WSJ format of Foster's address without the extraneous stylistic emphases found in the Marginalia version:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html
"lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation"
It may seem inconsistent but I find it nicely complements Will Ferrell's commencement speech at Harvard:
The WSJ one is certainly easier to read and doesn't lose much but the almost excessive stylistic emphasis is what Wallace does; I'll talk the unabridged version. I do wonder if Wallace himself edited the essay for publication or if it was edited externally.
http://www.marginalia.org/log/archives/2009/05/so-very-sorry...
But in the comments on their apology page at the link above, there's a reference to a book in which the address was published with Wallace's permission, as well an interesting note about an edit that Wallace made to the speech before publishing it:
An essay on April 26 about David Foster Wallace’s commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, which has now appeared in book form as "This Is Water," misstated the speech’s publishing history. It was included in the collection "The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006"; it is not the case that Wallace, who died in September, "never published" the address.
The essay may also have left the incorrect impression that both of the following sentences in the speech were omitted from the text of "This Is Water": "It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master." In fact, only the second sentence was left out.
1. The great many people who live "unexamined lives" tend to be much happier. According to the research, conservatives are happier than liberals, people in the Midwest are happier than people on the coasts, etc.
2. The default settings are really, really good. You should be extremely skeptical whenever anybody tries to sell you that everyone is born "wrong" and needs to be "fixed" (circumcision, original sin, chiropractic adjustments for all children, etc.). (Vaccination and water fluoridation are the only exceptions I know of, and those are supported by actual science.)
3. Same with anyone saying, "If you don't do this one thing (which almost nobody does), your whole life is going to be HORRRRRRIBLE!!!"
4. Standard religions most certainly do eat people alive: the people who desperately obsess about them the way his (mostly imaginary) targets obsess about money, power, etc.
5. The real message of the article is the style, and what it says, sentence after sentence, is: "The older, wiser fish knows that life is crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. And BTW, you know I'm the older, wiser fish, because I'm such a soul-sapping drag. Oh, and BTW, I'm the older, wiser fish, and you're not, and if you can't see that, that only proves what a naïve little twit you are. One day, all you goddamned self-centered little successful optimistic goddamned twits will all be sorry!!!"
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fede...
"Federer as Religious Experience"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AaronSw/David_Foster_Walla...
http://harpers.org/media/pdf/dfw/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-000...
I'm halfway through Infinite Jest right now (putting me many weeks behind http://infinitesummer.org, and I recommend it as well.
Another great one (from "Consider The Lobster"), if you're interested in linguistics and who gets to decide what is "acceptable" English, is here: http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html (Extremely long -- if any of the shorter pieces really grab you, you really should just go to Amazon and snag both nonfiction collections.)