If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young
If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young (Seven Stories Press) is a 2013 collection of nine commencement speeches from Kurt Vonnegut, selected and introduced by longtime friend and author Dan Wakefield. [1]
After the publication of his novel Slaughterhouse-Five brought him worldwide acclaim in 1969, Kurt Vonnegut became one of America's most popular graduation speakers. "We are performing animals," he used to say somewhat sardonically.[2]
In 2016, Seven Stories Press released what it called a "(much) expanded second edition" of the book.
In 2020, Penguin Random House published a third edition, the first in paperback: If This Isn't Nice, What Is? (Even More) Expanded Third Edition: The Graduation Speeches and Other Words To Live By. There are three new speeches: “the anti-war Moratorium Day speech he gave in Barnstable, Massachusetts, in October 1969, a 1970 speech to Bennington College recommending ‘skylarking,’ and a 1974 speech to Hobart and William Smith Colleges about the importance of extended families in an age of loneliness.” There are fourteen speeches in all (11 at colleges; the Indiana Civil Liberties Union speech; the speech when he received the Carl Sandburg Award; and the anti-war speech he gave months after the publication of Slaughterhouse-Five. Related personal essays bring this edition to 18 chapters.[3]
The Speeches and Essays (Third Edition)
- What To Do When You Have the Power; In the Meantime, Remember to Skylark! Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont, June 1970
- The Terrible Disease of Loneliness Can Be Cured. Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York, May 26, 1974
- Let the Killing Stop. Barnstable High School, Barnstable, Massachusetts, October 23, 1969
- How to Make Money and Find Love! Fredonia College, Fredonia, New York, May 20, 1978
- Advice to Graduating Women (That All Men Should Know). Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia, May 15, 1999
- How to Have Something Most Billionaires Don't. Rice University, Houston, Texas, October 12, 2001
- How Music Cures Our Ills (And There Are Lots Of Them). Eastern Washington University, Spokane, Washington, April 17, 2004
- What the "Ghost Dance" of the Native Americans and the French Painters Who Led the Cubist Movement Have In Common. The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, February 17, 1994
- How I Learned From a Teacher What Artists Do. Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, May 8, 1994
- Don't Forget Where You Come From. Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana, May 11, 1996
- Why Social Justice Does More Than Art To Nourish the American Dream. State University of New York, Albany, New York, May 20, 1972
- How To Be A Wise Guy or Wise Girl. Southampton College, Southampton, New York, June 7, 1981
- Why You Can't Stop Me From Speaking Ill of Thomas Jefferson. The Indiana Civil Liberties Union (now The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, Indianapolis, Indiana, September 16, 2000
- Don't Despair If You Never Went to College! Carl Sandburg Award, Chicago, Illinois, October 12, 2001
- How I Got My First Job As A Reporter and Learned To Write In A Simple, Direct Way, While Not Getting A Degree In Anthropology. From An Unsentimental Education: Writers and Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995
- Somebody Should Have Told Me Not To Join A Fraternity. If I Knew Then What I Know Now: Advice To the Class of ‘94 from Thise Who Know Best, Cornell Magazine, May 1994
- The Most Censored Writer Of His Time Defends the First Amendment. The Idea Killers, Playboy Magazine, January 1984
- My Dog Likes Everybody, But Was Not Inspired By Ancient Greece and Rome or the Renaissance. Why My Dog Is Not A Humanist, The Humanist, November/December 1992
References
- ^ "If This Isn't Nice, What Is?". Biblio. Retrieved April 18, 2021.
- ^ "If This Isn't Nice, What Is?(Advice to the Young)". PaperbackBooks.com.au. Retrieved April 18, 2021.
- ^ "If This Isn't Nice, What Is? (Even More) Expanded Third Edition: The Graduation Speeches and Other Words To Live By". Penguin Random House. Retrieved April 18, 2021.