English language
Published Dec. 3, 2013
If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young
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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. 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.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 …
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. 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.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.