If This Isn't Nice, What Is? (Much) Expanded Second Edition: The Graduation Speeches and Other Words to Live By

Synopsis

Selected And Introduced By Fellow Novelist And Friend Dan Wakefield, This Much-expanded Edition Now Includes A Total Of Fifteen Of Kurt Vonnegut's Speeches. 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. Introduction -- Baccalaureate -- How To Make Money And Find Love! -- Advice To Graduating Women (that All Men Should Know!) -- How To Have Something Most Billionaires Don't -- How Music Cures Our Ills (and There Are Lots Of Them) -- What The Ghost Dance Of The Native Americans And The French Painters Who Led The Cubist Movement Have In Common -- How I Learned From A Teacher What Artists Do -- Don't Forget Where You Come From -- Why Social Justice Does More Than Art To Nourish The American Dream -- How To Be A Wise Guy Or A Wise Girl -- Why You Can't Stop Me From Speaking Ill Of Thomas Jefferson -- Don't Despair If You Never Went To College! -- 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 -- Somebody Whould Have Told Me Not To Join A Fraternity -- The Most Censored Writer Of His Time Defends The First Amendment -- My Dog Likes Everybody, But That Was Not Inspired By Ancient Greece And Rome Or The Renaissance -- Unstuck In Time : Quotes To Ponder. Kurt Vonnegut ; Selected And Introduced By Dan Wakefield. Chiefly Consists Of Selected Graduation Speeches Given By Vonnegut At Various Educational Institutions.