Vonnegut on 'Vonnegut Speech': "Spooky"

[Andy Carvin <acarvin@GSN.ORG>]

for those of you who have been circulating the Vonnegut MIT speech... -ac

'Vonnegut Speech' Circulates on Net

Dan Mitchell, Wired

(copyright permissions below)

 A copy of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s recent
MIT commencement address made heavy email rotation on
Friday. The characteristically pithy, funny, thoughtful
speech was passed from friend to friend stamped with such
comments as "worth a read" and "check this out - it's
great."=20

And it was great. Trouble is, it wasn't Vonnegut's. "Kurt
Vonnegut Jr. had never given a commencement address at
MIT," said Robert Sales, associate director of the school's
news office.=20

It turns out the "speech" was actually a column penned by
the Chicago Tribune's Mary Schmich. The column ran on 1
June - five days before UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
delivered the actual commencement address at MIT. That
speech "was a lot longer and maybe not as clever" as the
purported Vonnegut address, Sales said.=20

Much of Schmich's column - which consists of advice for
graduates - sounds like stuff Vonnegut might say: "Don't be
reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with
people who are reckless with yours.... Remember
compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed
in doing this, tell me how.... Keep your old love letters.
Throw away your old bank statements.... Do one thing every
day that scares you."=20

Nobody - least of all Schmich - can figure out why
Vonnegut's name was slapped onto her column. "Some
prankster apparently decided it would be funny. Why is it
funny? If you can figure that out, you're a genius," she said
Monday.=20

Perhaps the act itself wasn't funny, but some of the fallout
has been. First of all, there's the fact that (ahem) Wired
News ran part of the column as its Quote of the Day on
Friday. Also, Schmich says she's gotten as much attention
from the incident as just about anything she's written. "My
email's just flooded with messages," she says. And she says
she's actually been accused of plagiarizing Vonnegut - and
vice versa. On Friday, she managed to reach Vonnegut, who,
Schmich says, said the whole thing is "spooky."=20

In her column on Monday, Schmich writes that she wrote
the piece "one Friday afternoon while high on coffee and
M&M's." And, she insisted, "it was not art."=20

In part. Schmich blames the "cyberswamp" of the Internet
for all the trouble. "At newspapers, things like this have to
go through a barrier before they go out to the world," she
said. But on the Net "anybody can put anybody's name on
anything."=20

Nonetheless, she added, "No one involved in this did anything
bad, except the person who started it."=20

Copyright =A9 1993-97 Wired Ventures, Inc.
       Compilation copyright =A9 1997 HotWired, Inc.
       All rights reserved.=20

       This article is copyrighted by Wired Ventures, Inc. and may be
redistributed provided that the article remains intact, with this
copyright message clearly visible. Under any circumstances, this article
may not be re-sold or re-distributed for
compensation of any kind without prior written permission from Wired
Ventures, Inc.=20


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