We Need David Foster Wallace Now More Than Ever

Talia Cutler ’27

Executive Opinion Editor

 “The real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous respectable adult life dead.” David Foster Wallace said this in his famous 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, entitled “This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Special Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life.” A friend and I discussed this speech at length over ramen and bao buns. (Oh how DFW would have loved the combination of cocky undergrads and ramen!) We came to the dramatic conclusion that in a post-2016 America, an age rife with technological distractions, political polarization and a pervasive sense of alienation, David Foster Wallace’s words resonate with a haunting relevance both to the world and Trinity College. And more importantly, we need more of them. 

When was the last time you, a student at a liberal arts school, read a book for pleasure? Can you remember the last time you wrote something and never showed anyone? What about the last thing you ate and thought “Oh God That Is The Best Thing I Have Ever Tasted?” Are you living a life that is yours? Do your classes inspire joie de vivre? You may think these are ridiculous questions for me to be asking you. No, your intro-level biology class does not spark immense joy. The Cave hasn’t made your mouth water since they took away burrito bowls. Why does this matter? Trinity’s website defines a liberal arts education as being able to “build a foundation of critical thinking, reflection, and expression that will prepare you to ask the right questions and seek the best solutions.” This is pretty typical of most liberal arts institutions. A general description with such mind-numbing vagueness it hardly holds any meaning.  It is not what came out of Wallace’s mouth when speaking to the soon-to-be graduates of Kenyon, as you read earlier. Instead, he delivered that haunting line, warning that their education was meant to show them how not to be dead. Of course, he didn’t mean literally. He elaborated on the unconscious and droning (dead) nature of adulthood, and the importance of making your life your own without succumbing to selfishness and overwhelming negativity. Beyond the jokes I make about Trinity, there are several truths to campus life. Wallace would call them “capital-T Truths.” One: that the counseling center is often booked up and unavailable for appointments. Two: That students sometimes take classes to satisfy some arbitrary transcript requirement rather than out of interest or passion. Three: when you look up “Are students happy at Trinity college?” this is what comes up: “The student body for the most part is very cliquey, tense, aloof, and standoffish. The culture among the student body is disappointing. The lack of engagement and effort among students in the classroom is also disappointing.” In Wallace’s words, our liberal arts curriculum is failing our students. One is left to wonder what DFW would think of a college community so tragically “dead” before matriculation. What then?

If you’re looking to read more DFW, be warned. Stylistically, there is no ignoring Wallace’s density. He is notorious for run-on sentences and blocks of text. Infinite Jest has over 200 pages of footnotes at the end —  one of which is about 30 pages long alone. “My Big Problem With Magazines Is That They Tend To Have Word Lengths” Wallace laments in an essay title.  In an age of consumable media, this is impenetrable. Why can’t everything be segmented into Tiktok clips with subway surfers gameplay in the background? As attention spans have grown shorter and shorter in the past 20 years (I bet most of you quit reading this article after the opening paragraph) DFW’s writing has gotten both more relevant yet ironically underconsumed in an easy-entertainment focused culture. Wallace’s open critique of entertainment is best summed by his assertion that “(Entertainment) is fine in low doses. But there’s something about the machinery of our relationship to it that … we don’t stop at low doses.” This overconsumption that he describes is ever-present in this digital age, along with the rising spread of misinformation and AI — often both at once. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is notorious for their use of AI to spread misinformation. In late August, he released an AI generated picture of Taylor Swift’s endorsement, as well as one of Kamala Harris speaking in front of a communist flag. 

It is becoming increasingly confusing to go online in an age where politics and technology rip at vulnerable and uneducated Americans. This sort of thing screams for the commentary from America’s great post-postmodernist writer. Yet, his thoughts on these subjects are absent. 

David Foster Wallace committed suicide just eight days before The New York Times called him “The best mind of his generation.” He left an unfinished manuscript (“The Pale King”) and an untouchable legacy. Yet, he also left the next generation of his readers in the dark. His thoughts on technology, politics, pop-culture, and literature, while relevant, are remnants of an earlier time. What about the rapid changes that have taken place since then? As the world has developed past 2008, giving us 5G iPhones, the war in Afghanistan and a pandemic, we are left with scraps from 16 years ago to pore over, to continue to reinterpret with each passing year. 

Perhaps the most prolific re-interpreters of his aphorisms are us: the students of small liberal arts schools (much like Kenyon). This is the very audience Wallace sought to warn about “the capital-T Truth:” “The real value of a real education has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness.” This awareness is something we clearly lack. Somewhere along the line, the liberal arts curriculum has lost the plot. Without a modern voice from a familiar figure, how are we to find it again?

Whether you are ripping into This Is Water over ramen or just encountering it now, ask yourself what does it mean to be “dead” at a school like Trinity? How can we prevent it? Applying systems of empathy to an academic community has never seemed so impossible. Perhaps if he had not passed so soon, Wallace could have guided us poor undergrads to understanding this ever-complex increasingly digital world on a more human level. David Foster Wallace tells us what it means to be a person better than any other writer or philosopher of the modern age. As the world has descended into chaos politically and culturally, we remain sorely in need of his perspective on the ever-evolving and chronically dead circumstances of our communities.