I decided to mix things up a little this week and read a book by the author of my favorite short story when I was in high school, Harrison Bergeron. That story, one many of you have probably read, was written by famed author and WWII veteran, Kurt Vonnegut. Most known for Slaughter-House Five, the book based on Vonnegut’s experiences in WWII and named after the place where he and other POWs were held during the bombing of Dresden, Vonnegut was also a much sought after commencement speaker.
If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? – Advice for the Young is a compilation of Vonnegut’s commencement speeches, put together with an introduction by Dan Wakefield. Infused with his classic wit and eccentricity, the speeches cover topics from crack babies to fossil fuels and helicopter gunships to musi, often within only a sentence or two of each other. Using humor – “Nature had obviously color-coded people for a reason.” – he brings emphasis to serious topics while giving the reader a little chuckle along the way.
The speech I liked the most, and which I believe is most relevant to the student veterans who may be reading my posts about education this week, talks about his experiences in the Anthropology Department of the University of Chicago while using his G.I. Bill. His experience was surprisingly similar to the experiences I have heard recited from today’s student veterans. Specifically, he discusses the poor reception professors gave to his attempts to inject his experiences into the class discussion, likening it to “coming to a crap game with loaded dice.” He also goes a little further into why he believes that is so and the general way vets were treated, but I don’t want to give that away.
Whether you pick this book up to read his story and realize that your professor, who doesn’t want to hear your opinion on Afghanistan, even though you spent 36 of the last 48 months there, isn’t an anomaly or you simply want to dive into the slightly disjointed but always amusing and insightful world of Kurt Vonnegut’s creation, I believe you will enjoy reading it. The speeches are short and Wakefield’s introduction provides quite a bit of detail about Vonnegut that I found interesting. And nothing can beat flipping the page to be greeted by a phrase like “transvestite hermaphrodites” being applied to punctuation.
To read more about Kurt Vonnegut, you can go the website that bears his name.
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