At a Glance
- Read by: Wallace delivered this address himself in 2005, so the recording is the source document rather than a studio reading of a book.
- At its heart: Attention and default settings, everyday empathy, secular practical philosophy, the commencement address as form.
- Vibe: Direct, wry and unexpectedly steadying.
- Short version: Twenty-four minutes that reward replaying, though the print edition's built-in pauses are a real loss one reviewer names outright.
Twenty-four minutes is an unusual thing to sell as an audiobook, and in this case the brevity is not a limitation but the whole point of the object. What you get is the recording of the commencement address David Foster Wallace gave at Kenyon College in 2005, described by the publisher as the only public talk Wallace ever gave about how to live. Every printed version of This Is Water descends from this event. The audio does not adapt a book; the book adapted this. That inversion matters more than the runtime, because it makes the recording the primary document and everything else a transcription of it.
How This Is Water: The Original David Foster Wallace Recording Holds Up
The argument Wallace makes is deceptively small, and it stays small on purpose. He asks how a person avoids moving through a comfortable adult life on autopilot, and how you get yourself out of the foreground of your own thoughts long enough to extend anything like real attention to other people. He builds it out of supermarket queues and traffic rather than philosophy, which is why it has survived being forwarded between strangers for twenty years. Heard rather than read, the piece regains something the page flattens: it was written to be spoken to a specific room of graduating students, and the address form, the jokes calibrated for an audience, the direct second person, all land differently when someone is actually saying them.
The voice on the recording is Wallace's own, and for once that is not a cost-saving decision or a marketing credential. This material only exists because he stood up and delivered it, so the reading is the event rather than a performance of it. The trade is that you are hearing a novelist at a lectern, not a trained reader in a booth: the pacing is a speaker's pacing, shaped by a live audience rather than by an engineer. If you have only encountered the text as a designed printed object, hearing the sentences at the speed a person actually says them is a genuinely different experience, and the one the words were built for.
Why This Is Water: The Original David Foster Wallace Recording Works as an Audiobook
One reviewer makes the case for the audio directly and simply. Vinod writes that "This audiobook explains simple truths of life in a unique way", reports feeling connected to the message, and notes it is short but powerful. That is the most format-specific endorsement on the page, and it is worth more than the star rating attached to it, because the reviewer is plainly describing the thing being sold rather than a copy of the printed edition.
The other reviews add texture even where they are not about the recording. A five-star notice titled to include the complaint that it is too short calls the speech amazing and reflects on how directly Wallace explains both why he could not bear life and how a person might live it, ending with the wish to have had much more of it. Cory wiedmann frames it as "A quick reminder of the powerful thoughts and words of DFW" and "A good kick in the butt" about how we treat the people around us. Each is circling the same effect: a short piece that resets something.
Length is genuinely part of the appeal rather than a shortfall. Under half an hour makes this a single sitting, repeatable, and repeatability is how a piece of practical philosophy actually does its work. Wallace's own framing, that the ideas renew on rereading, applies more naturally to a twenty-four-minute recording you can play again on a walk than to a book you have to physically retrieve. Very few audiobooks are short enough to become a habit, and the ones that are tend to be worth more per minute than the runtime suggests. My own test for something this brief is whether I would still want it on a third pass, and I would.
Weak Spots in This Is Water: The Original David Foster Wallace Recording
The most useful review on this listing is also the one that argues against the format, and it is worth taking seriously. Tina the S. describes the printed edition as a designed object, with roughly one sentence to a page so that each reads almost like a koan and the reader is invited to stop and reflect between them. The review then states plainly that the audio version does not admit these pauses, and the notice ends abruptly a few words later, so the full comparison never arrives. What survives is a real objection: the print edition builds silence into the layout, and a continuous reading does not.
The review pool is otherwise a strange mix, and knowing that saves you from misreading the score. Of the five written notices on the page, one is explicitly about this audiobook, one compares the two formats, two speak of reading rather than of listening, and one is a four-star note about damaged packaging on a physical delivery. The listing also shows a 4.6 average drawn from just two ratings, a sample so small it means nothing at all. None of this is a knock on the recording. It simply means the visible approval attaches mostly to a text that exists in several forms.
The Right Listener for This Is Water: The Original David Foster Wallace Recording
Anyone who has read this speech in print and wants to hear it as it was actually delivered should start here, and so should listeners meeting it for the first time who prefer their philosophy short, secular and practical. It works well for students, for people at a job or life transition, and for anyone who wants something they can replay quarterly rather than finish once. Readers of Wallace's fiction will also find it a rare direct statement from a writer who usually buried his convictions under several layers of irony.
Not the right buy if you want the material as a reflective object rather than a talk, since a reviewer here makes a persuasive case that the printed edition's deliberate pacing, one sentence to a page, does something the continuous audio cannot. Anyone expecting a book-length treatment should also recalibrate: twenty-four minutes is a single speech, not an argument developed at length. And if you need polished studio narration, note that this is a live address by a novelist rather than a professional reading, which is exactly its value and also exactly its limitation.
A Few Questions About This Is Water: The Original David Foster Wallace Recording
Is a twenty-four minute audiobook worth buying?
That depends on whether you value repetition. Very few recordings are short enough to replay regularly, and this one asks under half an hour each time. If you want length per dollar, look elsewhere. If you want something you can return to quarterly on a walk, the brevity is the feature.
What does the print edition do that this audiobook cannot?
It builds in silence. A reviewer describes the book as roughly one sentence per page, so the reader stops between thoughts by design, and states directly that the recording does not admit those pauses before the sentence breaks off. The page controls your pacing; a continuous reading controls it for you.
