If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?

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 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. There were years when public speaking was Vonnegut’s main source of income. “We are performing animals,” he used to say somewhat sardonically. In these speeches Vonnegut jokes, entertains, inspires, and conveys something of the momentousness of life.