Kurt Vonnegut: 'Cigars are made of trail mix!', Agnes Scott College - 1999

To view video of speech, click here.

15 May 1999, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia, USA

We must be very close to a powerful transmitter for CNN, right? Anybody know where it is? Anybody know where that transmitter is? Can't point it out?Anybody know where Jane Fonda is? And in the early days of radio, I remember, people living too close to the transmitter of Station KDKA in Pittsburgh used to hear soap operas in their bridge work and their mattress springs. And now CNN plays such a big part in the lives of so many Americans, including my own, that we might as well be hearing Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour in our bridge work and mattress springs.

And I won't lie to you today. The news from CNN can be really bad. But I also give you my word of honour that you before me, the class of 1999 at Agnes Scott College are near the very top of the very best news I can ever hear. By working as hard at becoming wise and reasonable and well-informed, you have made our little planet a saner place than it was before you got here. So thank you for that.

God bless you and the faculty of this college and those who made it possible for you to go from strength to strength here. Thanks to all of you, the forces of ignorance and brutality have lost again. Not that there hasn't been a lot of good news along with the bad long before you got here. I'm talking about the birth of works of art, music, paintings, statues, buildings, poems, stories, plays, essays and movies. You bet. And humane ideas, which make us feel honoured to be members of the human race.

What can you yourselves contribute? Well, you've come this far anyway, and it wasn't easy. And I now recite a famous line by the poet Robert Browning with one small change. I have replaced his word 'man', which in his time was taken to mean 'human being' with the word, with the word 'woman'. May I say too that his wife, Elizabeth Barrett, was as great a poet as he was, 'how do I love thee? Let me count the ways' and so on.

While I'm at it. Get a load of this. The atomic bomb, which we dropped on the people of Hiroshima, was first envisioned by a woman, not a man. She was of course, Mary Woltstonecraft Shelly. She didn't call it an atomic bomb. She called it the monster of Frankenstein.

But back to Robert Browning and what he said about anyone who hopes to make world better. Again, I've changed the word man to woman for this occasion. 'A woman's reach should exceed her grasp or what's a heaven for?' And of course, the original, 'a man's grasp should exceed his reach or what's a heaven for?'

Now, speaking of women, Pollyanna is not your graduation speaker here today, Pollyanna is bound to be speaking somewhere, irrepressibly optimistic, seeing good in everything. So I will comment as briefly and efficiently as possible on the perfectly horrible news CNN has been giving us about the Balkans and that high school in Colorado. I won't go on and on about it. We're here for a good time and we are darn well going to have one. Others with axes to grind are playing the blame game, blaming the National Rifle Association, the movies, tv, pop music, video games, no prayers in the school.

I myself have an axe, which I have ground as sharp as a razor. What would I like to do with it if I could? I would like to plant it in the forehead of the Babylonian King Hammurabi who lived almost 4,000 years ago now.

Hammurabi gave us a code, which is honoured to this very day by many nations, including our own, and by all heroes in cowboy and gangster films, and by far too many people who feel that they have been insulted or injured, however, slightly, however, accidentally. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Revenge is not only sweet, revenge is a must. What antidote can there be for an idea that popular and poisonous? Revenge provokes revenge, which is sure to provoke revenge, forming an endless chain of human misery.

Here's the antidote. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Amen. Now, some of you may know that I'm a humanist, not a Christian, but I say of Jesus as all humanists do. If what he said was good and so much of it was absolutely beautiful, what can it matter if he was God or not? If Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I'd rather be a rattlesnake.

Okay, now let's have some fun. Let's talk about sex. Let's talk about women. Freud said he didn't know what women wanted. Well, I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything. What do men want. Well, they want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn't get so mad at 'em all the time.

Now, why are so many people getting divorced today? It's because most of us don't have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a whole lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a whole lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to. Now a few Americans, but very few, still have extended families — the Navajos, the Kennedys. But most of us, if we got married today, are just one person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it's a woman. A woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it's a man. When a couple has an argument nowadays, they may think it's about money or sex or power or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they're really saying to each other though is you're not enough people!

I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Igbo who had 600 relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family. They were going to take that kid to meet all its relatives, Igbos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins, not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, to cuddle it, to gurgle to it and say how pretty it was or how handsome — wouldn't you have loved to be that baby?

Now, I sure wish I could wave a wand and give every one of you an extended family, make you an Igbo or a Navajo or a Kennedy. Least I can do is give you health tips. I've already mentioned sunscreen and don't smoke cigarettes, which are as evil as Slobidan Milosovic. But cigars are good for you! They're so healthfiul that there is a magazine devoted to their enjoyment, with cigar smoking role models on the cover — athletes movie stars, rich guys, why not the Surgeon General?

Cigars, of course, are made of trail mix, a blend, raisins, cashews, and granola, which has been soaked for a week in maple syrup. So to celebrate the end of your graduation day, why don't you eat a cigar at bedtime? No cholesterol.

Guns are also good for people. No nicotine and no cholesterol. Ask your congressperson if that isn't true.

Incidentally, if somebody asks you whether you are a liberal or a conservative, tell 'em this. 'Listen buster, I'm a graduate of Agnes State College in Decatur GA, zip code 30030. They taught me to think for myself there. You want to know if I'm a liberal or a conservative? I'm both of those and neither one. Go jump in the lake, go climb a tree. I have so far quoted Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Hammurabi and Jesus Christ. I now give you Sir William Gilbert of the team of Gilbert and Sullivan. 'I often think it's comical, how nature always does contrive, that every boy and every gal that's born into the world alive, is either a little liberal or a little conservat-tive'.

And while I'm at it, why don't I give you Eugene Victor Debs, the great labour leader who ran for president three times on the socialist ticket, and who died in 1926 when I was four years old. 'As long as there is a lower class, I'm in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.' Now, that's worth repeating. 'As long as there's a lower class, I'm in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.' Wouldn't you like to say that when you get out of bed every morning with the roosters crowing? 'As long as there is a lower class, I'm in it. As long as there's a criminal element, I'm of it. As long as there's a soul in prison, I am not free.'

[Plane overhead]

Excuse me, I beg your pardon. I'm receiving signals from CNN and my bridge work. Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour.say CNN's military consultants are unanimous in feeling that our revenge on the Serbs for their revenge on the Kosovars has gone about as well as could be expected. The code of Hammurabi — revenge, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth always works that way. About as well as can be expected.

Wait a minute, somebody else is speaking. No, it's not Wolf, it's not Christiane. Whoever it is, and I bet she's blonde. She's saying, I can lose 30 pounds in 30 days ! And never once feel hungry! Okay, she's gone now. Thank goodness. My bridge work has fallen silent of its own accord. I thought for a minute there I was going to have to ask somebody for dental floss, high tech. How would that have been for high tech tuning out CNN with dental floss?

How I love high tech! Forbes magazine asked a bunch of us a while back to name our favourite technologies. I said The Encyclopaedia Britannica on a shelf because it's alphabetical. My address book also alphabetical and the mailbox on the corner. Putting a letter in the mailbox is like feeding a great big bullfrog painted blue. You know what its lid says to me when I close it? 'Ribbit,' it says.

Don't give up on books. They feel so good. Their friendly heft and sweet reluctance of their pages when you turn them with your sensitive fingertips. A large part of our brains is devoted to deciding whether what our hands are touching is good or bad for us. Any brain worth a nickel knows books are good for us. Computers are insincere. Books are sincere, and don't try and make yourself an extended family out of the spooks on the internet. Get yourself a Harley and join Hell's Angels instead.

Alright, let's stop kidding around and get down to the nitty gritty. You know what you are class of 1999? You are a bunch of Eves, and now that you've eaten the apple of knowledge, you're getting kicked out of here. Many of you intend to become teachers, which is the noblest of all professions in a democracy. Teachers can be so good for this country, but only if their classes can be cut to 18. Teaching is friendship and nobody can deal intelligently with more than 18 friends at any given time. And only well-informed warm-hearted. people can teach others things they'll always remember and love .

Computers and TVs can never do that. A computer teaches a child what a computer can become. An educated human being teaches a child what a child can become.

Now, some of you'll become mothers. These things happen. If you should find yourself sidelined in this fashion, remind yourself of these lines by the 19th century white male poet William Ross Wallace. 'The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.' That being the case, you might teach the kid a couple of things that should say every day. 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. 'And 'as long as there's a soul in prison, I'm not free'. Ideals too attainable? Class of 1999. Let me impress on you that ideals by their very definition, can never be too high, for children or anyone. A child's reach should exceed its grasp or what's a heaven for?

Now, this wonderful speech is almost nearly twice as long as the most efficient, effective oration in American history, which is Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Lincoln incidentally was killed by a two bit actor, exercising his right to bear arms.

Up till now, most of what I've said has been a custom job for this Dixieland rite of passage. But every graduation pep talk I've given has ended with words about my father's brother, Alex Vonnegut, a Harvard educated insurance agent in Indianapolis who was well read and wise. The first graduation at which I spoke incidentally was also at what was then a woman's college, Bennington in Vermont. The Vietnam War was going on and the graduates wore no makeup to show how ashamed and sad they were. But about my uncle Alex, who's up in heaven now, one of the things he found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed when they were happy! He himself did his best to acknowledge that when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, 'if this isn't nice, what is?' So I hope that you adorable women before me will do the same for the rest of your lives. When things are going well — sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment and then say out loud, if this isn't nice, what is?

Let that be the motto of the Agnes Scott College class of 1999. 'If this isn't nice, what is'? Now that's one favour I've asked of you. Now I ask for another one. I ask it not only of the graduates, but for everyone here, including President Mary Brown Bullock, where are you?

I want a show of hands after I ask this question, and keep your eyes on Dr. Bullock. How many of you have had a teacher at any level of your education who made you more excited to be alive, prouder to be alive than you had previously believed possible? Hold up your hands please. What's she doing? Okay. Alright. Now, take down your hands and say the name of that teacher to someone sitting or standing near you. All done. If this isn't nice what is

There we are.

Good luck and I thank you for your attention.