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If This Isn't Nice, What Is? (Much) Expanded Second Edition: The Graduation Speeches and Other Words to Live by
If This Isn't Nice, What Is? (Much) Expanded Second Edition: The Graduation Speeches and Other Words to Live by | Kurt Vonnegut
4 posts | 1 read | 4 to read
Best known as one of America's most astonishing and enduring contemporary novelists, Kurt Vonnegut was also a celebrated commencement address giver. Vonnegut never graduated from 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. "But about my Uncle Alex, who is up in Heaven now," Vonnegut, an avowed Humanist, would say sometimes in a graduation speech, "one of the things he found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed it when they were happy. . . . We could be drinking lemonade in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, 'If this isn't nice, what is?'" If This Isn't Nice, What Is? includes eleven speeches and four pieces of journalism on related themes. Six of the fifteen are new to the second edition--on topics as wide-ranging as why it is that Kurt Vonnegut's dog loves people more than Kurt Vonnegut does, and what it feels like to be the most censored writer in America--and much, much more. In each of these talks and short essays, Vonnegut takes pains to find the few things worth saying and a conversational voice to say them in that's funny and serious and joyful even if sometimes without seeming so.
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tjwill
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tjwill @robinb I‘ve seen so many good things about it! 3y
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Faibka
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“We have to be constantly jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
Very true!

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Faibka
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“It is a tragedy, perhaps, that human beings can get so much energy and enthusiasm from hate. If you want to feel ten feet tall and as though you could run a hundred miles without stopping, hate becomes pure cocaine any day. Hitler resurrected a beaten, bankrupt, half-starved nation with hatred and nothing more. Imagine that.”

Kurt‘s words continue to be relevant today. Love this man!

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Caffeinated_Reader
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#27 of my year. This is a third rereading for me. I have read most of Vonnegut‘s books from when I was 16/17 years old so every time I reread his books it‘s incredibly nostalgic for me. And now I wish I was using my Vonnegut mug this morning 🙇🏻‍♀️

Caffeinated_Reader This is the 3rd time I have read this book, it still holds up. I love his writing and wit and intellect. He‘s one of my favorite writers and every time I read his books it takes me back to being 16 and discovering his ideas and being blown away by his honesty. He‘s definitely one of my hero‘s in life. So it goes. 4y
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