If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young

2013 • 144 pages

Ratings18

Average rating3.6

Best known as one of America’s most astonishing and enduring contemporary novelists, Kurt Vonnegut was also a celebrated commencement address giver. Vonnegut never graduated from college, so his words to any class of graduating seniors always carried the delight, and gentle irony, of someone savoring an achievement he himself had not had occasion to savor on his own behalf. “But about my Uncle Alex, who is up in Heaven now,” Vonnegut, an avowed Humanist, would say sometimes in a graduation speech, “one of the things he found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed it when they were happy. . . . We could be drinking lemonade in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, ‘If this isn’t nice, what is?’” If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? includes eleven speeches and four pieces of journalism on related themes. Six of the fifteen are new to the second edition—on topics as wide-ranging as why it is that Kurt Vonnegut’s dog loves people more than Kurt Vonnegut does, and what it feels like to be the most censored writer in America—and much, much more. In each of these talks and short essays, Vonnegut takes pains to find the few things worth saying and a conversational voice to say them in that’s funny and serious and joyful even if sometimes without seeming so.

Genres

Want to edit this book?Become a Librarian

Popular Reviews

Reviews with the most likes.

Danielle

I'll admit I just got this because it was really cheap on the Kindle library while I was loading it for a trip - and I like Vonnegut, so what the hell. I didn't expect it to be quite so much a book you'd really only give to a recent graduate but I still found his speeches - not two the same, but all echoing the same sentiments - just as pleasantly quirky and heartwarming as his books. He seems like such a great guy. Would love to pick up a biography sometime.

Anyways basic advice takeaways - be kind and merciful to your fellow humans. Be a pacifist, war is no good. We should care about the environment because we're destroying the earth. The normal career path is not necessary to get where you're going. There needs to be more than two people in a family - and more than a nuclear family - humans are built on community.

Anyhoo maybe pick this up for your next grad but wouldn't go seeking it out otherwise, unless it's $1.99

August 12, 2017

Aldor

I randomly purchased this book based on recommendations. I didn't know who Kurt Vonnegut was. It's a collection of talks given to University freshmen. It's short, funny by moment, insightful and brings oneself to think. Kurt obviously had a huge amount of empathy. What shines in those talks is his ability to make us understand others point of view. I will definitely pick-up his books after this introduction. Recommended.

March 27, 2018

Neeraj Chavan

“If this isn't nice, what is?”

I wanted to read Kurt Vonnegut since a long time and somehow I happened to stumble across this book in my vast e-library. It's a short interesting book. This book is written for people who're standing on the helm of graduation and wondering “Okay, now what?”
It's a compendium of Kurt's hilariously profound take on various ideas like life, love, education, war, humanity, art, media and of course graduation! Well, I'm about to graduate in next few days and Kurt's message and this book, both stuck a chord. Read it for Vonnegut's amazing sense of humor and thought provoking wit. He's indeed the master of black comedy and satire!

This is the first Vonnegut book that I read and I sure am looking forward to explore more of his works!

May 27, 2017

Top Prompts

Featured Prompt

3,954 books

#3,954 in What are your favorite books of all time?

When you think back on every book you've ever read, what are some of your favorites? These can be from any time of your life – books that resonated with you as a kid, ones that shaped your personal...