This Is Water – David Foster Wallace
NF/NF

For sale: a rare and exceptional, first edition, later printing hardcover copy of This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life by David Foster Wallace. First Edition stated, 2009 Little Brown. Later Printing with partial number line. 

The book is in Near Fine condition with clean boards, strong silver title gilt on the spine, a small remainder mark on the bottom page block, tight binding, no spine tilt, lightly rolled spine ends, mild edge wear, and lightly rubbed corners. The interior of the book is also in Near Fine condition with an erased price is on the first free end paper.  No other marks or inscriptions. The end papers and the interior pages are clean and bright.

The dust jacket is in Near Fine condition with mild surface wear and the price on the front flap. Looks great in a new Brodart archival wrap.

Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. 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 thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace’s electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.