Welcome to Douglas Murray’s column, “Things Worth Remembering,” in which he presents great speeches from famous orators we should commit to heart. Scroll down to listen to Douglas reflect on David Foster Wallace’s iconic 2005 commencement speech, “This Is Water.”
“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’ ”
So begins one of America’s great speeches about education—a speech that almost did not happen. After all, David Foster Wallace was an offbeat candidate to deliver the 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College in Ohio. Though a popular writer—of, among other things, his 1,079-page masterpiece of a novel, Infinite Jest—he was not known as a public speaker. A single student on the selection committee put his name forward. Wallace himself reportedly doubted whether he had the ability to deliver the 20-minute-long speech, and was deeply unsure as to whether he should accept the invitation. Yet something about the idea of speaking at a small Midwestern school with a graduating class of around 400 students appealed to him—and he agreed.
On the day of the speech itself his nerves were apparently on full throttle. He dubbed the commencement, “the big scary ceremony.” Clad in academic regalia, he approached a lectern under a scorching sun, before telling the crowd: “If anybody feels like perspiring, I’d advise you to go ahead, because I’m sure going to.” It was a humble beginning to a speech that is nothing short of an American classic.
