David Foster Wallace Archives

This now renowned commencement address given at Kenyon College back in 2005 has become one of David Foster Wallace's most impactful and widely shared essays. The core message - about waking ourselves up from our default modes and making choices about our lives and what we choose to pay attention to - is a crystallisation… Continue reading ‘If you’ve really learned how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options.’

Book Bits

Stop Avoiding the Uncomfortable Questions – David Foster Wallace

April 3, 2019April 2, 2019 Vanessa Able

"Is it right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?" David Foster Wallace asks in the course of his brilliant essay on eating and ethics, Consider the Lobster. An article originally commissioned by Gourmet magazine back in 2004 meant to cover the Maine Lobster Festival, DFW's assignment quickly went off track… Continue reading Stop Avoiding the Uncomfortable Questions – David Foster Wallace

Seeing Into the Reality of Emptiness
Zen Master Tangen Harada Roshi on how understanding the truth of emptiness can reveal Original Mind.
The Problem With Business As Usual – On Interconnectedness and the Climate Crisis
Inspired by the work of the Dalai Lama and Greta Thunberg, Susan Bauer-Wu's book is her personal expression of concern for the earth.
Orhan Pamuk on Writing By Hand
Orhan Pamuk's hand-writing habit hasn't budged, despite the conventions of our time.
How We Live Is How We Die: Pema Chödrön on Preparing for Death Here and Now
Pema Chödrön on what the Tibetan approach to living and dying can teach us about liberation in the present moment.
The Path that Goes Nowhere – Barbara Brown Taylor on the Practice of Labyrinth Walking
Barbara Brown Taylor reflects on her own experience of Labyrinth-walking and the significance of the path without a destination.

Sheila Lynch-Benttinen – Equations
Massachusetts poet Sheila Lynch-Benttinen's "Equations" is a work of heavy content, juxtaposed with simple elegance and sparseness.
Judy Mathews – After Weeks Without Rain in Northwest Ohio
"After Weeks Without Rain in Northwest Ohio" by poet Judy Mathews is an offering or a prayer to the natural blessings of a place.
Erika Seshadri – Eviction Notice
As gently as the narrator of the poem relocates a spider, Erika Seshadri carefully places her quiet poem "Eviction Notice" at our feet.
Nancy Hamilton – The Door Opened
Nancy Hamilton's enlightening poem "The Door Opened" revels in the glory of openness and emptiness, and overcoming illusions.
Steve Fay – turnings: a suite of poems
Steve Fay's "turnings: a suite of poems" is something special, a sequence of earthy fragments tumbling down the page like detritus.