This Is Water

This is water (English Original title: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life) is an essay by David Foster Wallace. It was published in 2009 by the publishing house Little, Brown and Company. Ulrich Blumenbach was responsible for the translation, which appeared in KiWi Paperbacks, 2012. The text of the essay originally comes from a speech given by Wallace on 21 May 2005 graduates of Kenyon College. Even before the official release circulated a transcript of the speech on the Internet. The essay was also published in The Best American nonrequired Reading 2006.

Themes of the essays include " the difficulty of empathy " ( "the difficulty of empathy "), " the importance of being well-adjusted " ( "the importance of being well adjusted" ) and the "essential loneliness of adult life " ( "the essential lonesomeness of adult life " ). In addition, Wallace argues that the primary purpose of higher education is the ability to willingly decide on the way you perceive other people, and thus to act appropriately in everyday life. He sees the true freedom that is achieved through education, in formal, adapted to be able to act consciously and with understanding and with it the " default " ( "default setting" ) to overcome.

The marketing company The Glossary produced a nine -minute video with an audio recording of the speech and published it in May 2013. On 21 May 2013, the video due to a copyright claim of David Foster Wallace Literary Trust was deleted from the video sharing sites YouTube and Vimeo. Until deletion of the video reached more than 4 million views. In addition, a full, 22 - minute audio recording of the speech exists.

Expenditure

  • This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life. Little, Brown and Company, New York 2009, ISBN 9780316068222
  • This is Water / This Is Water: incitement to think. KiWi Paperbacks, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-462-04418-8
  • This Is Water / This is Water ( Special Edition ): David Foster Wallace speaks to graduates of Kenyon College, Ohio 2005 book, tacheles, Bochum, 2013, ISBN 978-3-941168-94-7. !
218637
de