Name: If This Isn't Nice, What Is? (Even More) Expanded Third Edition
Price: 19.95 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
ISBN: 9781609806101

A collection of 15 graduation speeches and treasured wisdom from the New York Times–bestselling literary icon and author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions

“Like [that of] his literary ancestor Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut’s crankiness is good-humored and sharp-witted.”—A.O. Scott, The New York Times Book Review

Master storyteller and satirist Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most in-demand commencement speakers of his time. His words were unfailingly insightful and witty, and they stayed with audience members long after graduation. Chosen and introduced by fellow novelist and friend Dan Wakefield, a selection of speeches and essays in this expanded 3rd edition include:

• “What to Do When You Have the Power; In the Meantime, Remember to Skylark!”
• “Why Social Justice Does More Than Art to Nourish the American Dream”
• “How to Make Money and Find Love!”
• “Somebody Should’ve Told Me Not to Join a Fraternity”
• “How to Have Something Most Billionaires Don’t”

Hilarious, razor-sharp, freewheeling, and at times deeply serious, these reflections are ideal not just for graduates but for anyone undergoing what Vonnegut would call their “long-delayed puberty ceremony”—marking the long and challenging passage to full-time adulthood.

Best known as one of our most astonishing and enduring contemporary novelists, Kurt Vonnegut was also a celebrated commencement address giver. He himself never graduated college, so his words to any class of graduating seniors always carried the delight, and gentle irony, of someone savoring an achievement he himself had not had occasion to savor on his own behalf.

Selected and introduced by fellow novelist and friend Dan Wakefield, the speeches in If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? capture this side of Kurt Vonnegut for the first time in book form. There are nine speeches, seven given at colleges, one to the Indiana Civil Liberties Union, one on the occasion of Vonnegut receiving the Carl Sandburg Award. In each of these talks Vonnegut takes pains to find the few things worth saying and a conversational voice to say them in that isn’t heavy-handed or pretentious or glib, but funny and serious and joyful even if sometimes without seeming so.

“If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? is a spectacular read in its entirety, brimming with Vonnegut’s unflinching convictions and timeless advice to the young.” —Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

“Like [that of] his literary ancestor Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut’s crankiness is good-humored and sharp-witted.” —A.O. Scott, New York Times Book Review

“Like so much of Vonnegut’s work, these speeches combine absurdist humor, pessimism and countercultural politics, with improbably and disarmingly charming results.” —Troy Jollimore, Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Journal

“If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? is a blast of pure acid.” —Entertainment Weekly

“The material here offers us a slightly different lens, a different window, extending across a wide range of time and geography, from Fredonia College in Fredonia New York in 1978 to Eastern Washington University in Spokane in 2004, and framed by not just Vonnegut’s sense of humor but also of humanity, his faith in our essential decency.” —David Ulin, Los Angeles Times

“These delightful scattershot commencement speeches offer fresh clues to what lay behind Kurt Vonnegut’s twinkly visage—clues that are well worth celebrating.” —Peter Matthiessen

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? (Even More) Expanded Third Edition

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By Kurt VonnegutSelected by Dan Wakefield