This is Water

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2009

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Background

Philosophical Context

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophies heavily influenced Wallace’s writing and views. In his Slate article, James Ryerson notes: “As Wallace recollected in 1992 in a letter to the novelist Lance Olsen, he was ‘deeply taken’ in the seminar with Wittgenstein’s first book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” (Ryerson). Wittgenstein’s beliefs are split into an early period and late period, the former represented by the Tractatus (1921) and the latter by Philosophical Investigations (published posthumously in 1953). The Tractatus set rules for the limits of logic, thought, and language. It famously states, “What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent” (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by C. K. Ogden, Project Gutenberg, 1921, pp. 23). This statement has many historical interpretations, but it mainly concerns meaning and words. What can be represented by the symbols in language? How is meaning constructed in someone’s head, communicated through expression, then engaged with by others? Wittgenstein intended to end all philosophical debates with the Tractatus’s strict rules; the work is indifferent and mathematical in its logic. In Investigations, however, Wittgenstein rejects many of his former claims, arguing that meaning in language is tied to how words are used. Further, it submits that interactions between people involve language games with different rules depending on context. Ryerson writes, “The shift in imagery is from language as a picture,” which can be broken down into logical corresponding parts, “to language as a tool” (Ryerson). For example, the phrase “here, here” could be received as a cheer, an emphasis on where to place something, or a call for someone’s attention, depending on the circumstance. Overall, communication serves as the bridge between the interior, sealed-off reality of the mind and the physical world.

Wallace wove struggles of meaning and language, which stir up loneliness and self-doubt, throughout his works. According to Ryerson, “Wallace agreed that the fundamental purpose of fiction was to combat loneliness” (Ryerson). Lenore Beadsman, in Broom of the System, fears she is a character in a novel; Infinite Jest’s Hal Incandenza completely loses the ability to express himself. Wallace touches on the topic in “This Is Water” when referring to over-intellectualizing things and getting stuck in cycles of interior monologue. Solipsistic dread, the idea that only the mind exists and nothing else, disturbed him throughout his life. Being understood is essential to living, and this theme runs through Wittgenstein’s philosophies and Wallace’s writing.

Literary Context

D. T. Max notes that by the time of the 2005 commencement speech, “Wallace had become convinced that the literary contortions for which he was known had become an impediment” (Max). Throughout his early career Wallace responded in opposition to “[t]he dominant style of the time [which] was the minimalism of writers such as Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie” (Max). These authors were reacting to the late modernist movement. Late modernism covers works created after World War II; it rejects conventional narratives and conveys stories by purposefully breaking narrative rules. Late modernist techniques include combining high and low art, stream of consciousness, psychological approaches, intimate characterization, and realism. Late modernists believe in progress.

Wallace was also responding to postmodernism and metafiction. Postmodernists believe moving literature forward is meaningless. They use irony, humor, parody, and weirdness to establish a foothold in critical context, viewing any endorsement of fiction’s ability to represent reality as insincere. Postmodernism’s disillusionment with convention denies the certainties of meaning and categorization; it uses lenses like irreverence, self-referentiality, and relativism. Metafiction can be used by postmodernists, but it is its own form and can be traced back through history. This style always brings the audience’s attention to its medium. Directly or indirectly, metafiction generates awareness of itself, of fiction as an object of art. Although Wallace “was drawn to the postmodernists, whose affection for puzzles and mirrors-within-mirrors sensibility reflected his own enthusiasm for math and philosophy” (Max), he strove to escape the movement’s deeply cynical irony.

Wallace saw close ties between postmodern fiction and mass-media consumerism. In the essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction,” he comments:

in 1990, flatness, numbness, and cynicism in one’s demeanor are clear ways to transmit the televisual attitude of stand-out transcendence—flatness is a transcendence of melodrama, numbness transcends sentimentality, and cynicism announces that one knows the score (Wallace, David Foster. “E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction,” Review of Contemporary Fiction, edited by Steven Moore, Dalkey Archive Press, summer 1993, pp. 181).

These attributes all revolve around irony and its skepticism toward earnestness. Wallace warns that “irony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks” (“E Unibus Pluram,” pp. 183). The precarious relationship between postmodern irony and its assimilation into the cultural norm leads Wallace to draw dire conclusions about what comes next. Culture, media, and fiction are mired in each other, as was he. He anticipated the emergence of a new generation that would “treat old untrendy human troubles and emotions in US life with reverence and conviction. These anti-rebels would be outdated […] Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naïve, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point” (“E Unibus Pluram,” pp. 193).

Wallace left the question of whether this new generation would prove themselves fruitful or futile unanswered. But taking the messages of “This Is Water” into consideration, it is clear that he had hope for sincerity.