Saturday, January 10, 2009

Three monologues

Monologue One, by David Foster Wallace, in the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address.

David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American author of novels, essays and short-stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He was best known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which Time included in its All-Time 100 Greatest Novels list (covering the period 1923-2006). (from the wikipedia page)

He committed suicide on September 12, 2008 at the age of 46. I have, and enjoyed reading, his collection of essays: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. His flowing essay on David Lynch and Lost Highway alone is worth the price of the book. His center piece in this book, on the soul-sucking quality of a luxury Caribbean cruise, is one of the best critiques of hedonism in action that I have read anywhere.

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Monologue Two, by Robert Flores, Jr. Read the monologue first, and then read this news report.

The monologue was typed by Robert and posted to the Arizona Star newspaper. I have transcribed it from the fax images. Any mistakes are those in the original fax.

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Monologue Three, by the Indian actor/writer Balraj Sahni in 1972. Balraj Sahni died of cardiac arrest in 1973.

Balraj Sahni's address to JNU in 1972 is as topical today, 37 years later, as it was then.

1 comment:

Harmanjit Singh said...

The DFW speech is now available at:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080213082423/http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html