DFW19: Ethics, Freedom, and Infinite Jest

Vernon Cisney, Ryan Kerr, and Andrew Langford
Moderator: Andrew Varnon
June 28, 2019, 9:00 AM — 10:15 AM

Reflecting on Wallace and September 11th

I was twenty-one years old when the Towers fell. I was an English major, but I had not yet heard of David Foster Wallace. I made it through four years of college without reading Wallace, Barthes, Borges, Powers, Egan, Franzen, Smith – and a long list of others. But then, I’ve never been a literature scholar – I’m a creative writer. I never spent enough time learning the canon – I instead picked up Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, J.K. Rowling. I read the books that grabbed hold of my face. Had I read “E Unibus Pluram” – I was in eighth grade when Wallace wrote it – I might have recognized myself, I might have understood that my choices of reading mimicked American choices in television. Instead, I thought myself elevated because I read The Economist, and because I earned a B in my journalism class.

This Is Water - Full version-David Foster Wallace Commencement Speech