I “StumbledUpon” this just now:
“This piece was presented as Kurt Vonnegut’s commencement address at MIT in 1997. It’s great stuff, but apparently it wasn’t written or delivered by Vonnegut. It’s still a beautiful piece…(click link to read)
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1kuILP/www.scripting.com/specials/vonnegutMIT.html”
In the latest publication of Vonnegut’s work, “Armageddon in Retrospect,” the Commencement address Vonnegut delivered at Clowes Hall, Indianapolis, on April 27, 2007, was included. And it’s much more entertaining and clever than the above. For example:
“If Jesus were alive today, we would kill him with lethal injection. I call that progress. We would have to kiss him for the same reason he was killed the first time. His ideas are just too liberal.”
“The most spiritually splendid American phenomenon of my lifetime wasn’t our contribution to the defeat of the Nazis, in which I played such a large part, or Ronald Reagan’s overthrow of Godless Communism, in Russia at least. The most spiritually splendid American phenomenon of my lifetime is how African-American citizens have maintained their dignity and self-respect, despite their having been treated by white Americans, both in and out of government, and simply because of their skin color, as though they were contemptible and loathsome, and even diseased. Their churches have surely helped them to do that. So there’s Karl Marx again. There’s Jesus again. And what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African-American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? ”Safe sex of the highest order.’”
“I consider anybody who borrows a book instead of buying it, or lends one, a twerp. When I was a student at Shortridge High School a million years ago, a twerp was defined as a guy who put a set of false teeth up his rear end and bit the buttons off the back seats of taxicabs.”
“And how should we behave during this Apocalypse? We should be unusually kind to one another, certainly. But we should also stop being so serious. Jokes help a lot. And get a dog, if you don’t already have one. I myself just got a dog, and it’s a new crossbreed. It’s half French poodle and half Chinese shih tzu. It’s a shit-poo. And I thank you for your attention, and I’m out of here.”
Kurt Vonnegut is, by far, my current favorite writer. Barnard College is shoving Virginia Woolf down all of my orifices, so she’s growing on me, but Vonnegut, ooh Vonnegut.
