March 2, 2009, 07:41 AM ET

The Real Reason for Studying the Liberal Arts

This week’s New Yorker is publishing an excerpt from an unfinished and unpublished novel, The Pale King, left behind by the late David Foster Wallace, along with an essay on Wallace by D.T. Max. Wallace is most famous for his novel Infinite Jest, and when he committed suicide last September, many hearts grieved. His previous novels were deeply admired by young and old, literary specialists and regular readers alike. The author wrestled with the easy solipsism that enslaves most of us, striving to find a way to see ordinary things and ordinary people with generosity. All the while, it turns out, he was facing his own terrible depression.

My daughter, choking back tears, called me the morning she heard that Wallace had committed suicide. Like many other 2005 Kenyon graduates, she had been thrilled when Wallace had agreed to be the commencement speaker. And on graduation day, she’d listened in rapt attention to what by now has become a fairly famous speech. My husband and I, as proud witnesses to our daughter’s graduation, listened to it as well. It was a truly bold speech — daring to grope for the meaning of life in a mere half hour or so, in front of an audience of families and students restless to move on to the moment when diplomas would be in hand and everyone could get at the sandwiches.

What a day it was — a cerulean blue sky and a temperature made for long-distance runners. People were smiling at one another, even as they sat uncomfortably on the metal folding chairs set up in rows on the young May grass.

After being briefly introduced, Wallace, with his academic attire gently fluttering in the wind, and his scraggly brown shoulder-length hair, strode to the podium. Nap time, for sure. Who, really, pays much attention to commencement speeches? My husband and I each settled back into our seats. Our heads tilted forward, the way heads do when preparing to invite the mind to drift elsewhere.

But there was something about Wallace that made you look up at him. His first gesture was to take his hand and sweep his hair away from his eyes and forehead (in what would become a steady rhythm of such hand gestures). From start to finish, he spoke with speed and urgency — mostly looking down at his written words, only occasionally looking up at his audience. Even so, if you were anything but a slug, you were riveted by what he said.

This was no ordinary, “As you go forth into the world” commencement address. Instead, it was a speech — this will sound corny — for the ages. Mind you, it was given when times were flush, and the graduating seniors had every expectation of being able to land a good job and earn pretty nice bucks. Wallace only obliquely made reference to the economy. Mostly, he talked about the way our minds direct our lives only when we become deliberative beings and choose to use them in this way. In a nutshell (if one can do such a thing — put such a speech into a nutshell), Wallace urged us to take responsibility for creating meaning in the most trivial moments of our lives. But read it for yourself here.

Forget, for a moment, questions about the terrible economic collapse, and whether there’s any monetary value in a degree in the liberal arts. These are important, to be sure. In his 2005 Kenyon College commencement address, David Foster Wallace offered the real reason to study the liberal arts — even, or especially, now.