David Foster Wallace On Learning How to Think

This is the commencement address David Foster Wallace gave to the graduates of Kenyon College in 2005. It captures his electric mind, and also his humility—the way he elevated and made meaningful, beautiful, many of the lonely thoughts that rattle around in our heads.

The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in This Is Water. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thought...