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MJ Nicholls's Reviews > This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
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Better heard spoken for the full sting. A powerful speech but the message seems to be rather simple: don’t be a selfish asshat. Or is that a little reductive? Anyway—one star for the cash-in and four stars for the speech. Coming soon from Little, Brown in DVD & books: The Best Hesitant Pauses on KCRW’s Bookworm, The Ten Best Awkward Selfconscious Squirming Moments on Charlie Rose, and Half-Remembered Conversations Anyone Has Ever Had With DFW. Also available from the DFW Tacky Cash-in Emporium: DFW headbands. For that sweaty public reading! DFW scrunchies. For that 80s ponytail look! DFW spectacles. For staring into the soulful eyes of Wallace on Google! Etc and so forth.
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Reading Progress
December 4, 2012
–
Started Reading
December 4, 2012
– Shelved
December 4, 2012
– Shelved as:
merkins
December 4, 2012
– Shelved as:
non-fiction
December 4, 2012
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-16 of 16 (16 new)
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Nathan "N.R."
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Dec 04, 2012 03:25PM
But it is a completionist requirement.
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Don't you have anything better to do than read and write?Start a band or something.
Nathan "N.R." wrote: "But it is a completionist requirement."It is. But why hardcover a speech that takes ten mins to . . . oi.
Ian wrote: "Don't you have anything better to do than read and write?"
There is nothing better. You should know that by now.
MJ wrote: "There is nothing better. You should know that by now. "Ssshhh, I don't want my daughters to find out. Yet.
Ian wrote: "Ssshhh, I don't want my daughters to find out. Yet."If you have daughters you've clearly had that something better. At least twice.
MJ wrote: "Ian wrote: "Ssshhh, I don't want my daughters to find out. Yet."If you have daughters you've clearly had that something better. At least twice."
Assuming they're not twins.
Relevant: some publisher is soon-to-release the "last interview" book. That's right, one interview published as a book. A whole book! Shameless. Though I want to read it, of course.
And if only we could all be jobless, full-time readers and writers! What a wonderfully over-cluttered-with-exacting-and-tempered-prose world it would be!Alas, some of us don't subsist on trust-funds...
Joshua Nomen-Mutatio wrote: "That's right, one interview published as a book."B-b-b-but the amazon picture says "and other Conversations." 128 pages. I'll guess 20 lines per page.
This DFW superfan feels a rapidly-receding superfan-ness as these commercial cash-ins keep piling up.
Joshua Nomen-Mutatio wrote: "This DFW superfan feels a rapidly-receding superfan-ness as these commercial cash-ins keep piling up."For the truly anti-cash-in crowd, may we introduce ourselves to Mr William T Vollmann. [basta!]
Yeah, Vollman will die in relative obscurity, like many a genius.
Someone kindly link me to this forthcoming cash-in, please? I'll ready my saliva in the meantime.
And I just read this (yet another amazingly cogent and incisive) interview from 2006 ('A Frightening Time In America'):http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/...
