Welcome, part of the beauty of being at
a university is having events like this, encounters with great thinkers and
artists. And hopefully an event like this is also
a celebration of that most precious and elemental activities of university,
reading. I like to tell the story of
my freshman year in college, when somebody in the opening week,
during orientation. Told the students that you should
not graduate from college without spending a whole night staying up reading,
not because you had an exam, but because you just loved the writing so
much. And I remembered that a few
months later when I stayed up all night on a Friday night
reading Mother Night. I'm Jonathan Sadowski, I'm the director
of the College Scholars program. Before we get started, I'd like to extend
a few words of thanks, I'd like to thank the Mandel Foundation for its
support of the program in its early years. I'd like to thank
the Office of the Dean for its continuing support of this program. I'd like to thank the provost's
office of Case Western for its support of the Speaker Series. I'd like thank the staff of the college
scholar's programme Benita McMoore. Barbara Klonte and Laura Seelin for
the hard work they did helping to make this event with all of its many
organizational tasks possible. And I'd finally like to thank
Aaron Walsh and Laura Kalifatus for the work that they put into this. The College Scholars Program will be
described more fully by the next person on this podium, but
I wanna say two things myself. The first is that the program
is unusual in that unlike many programs that bring in
speakers to college campuses. The College Scholars Program makes
a special effort to be attentive to the interests and
requests of its students for speakers. And no speaker in the program's
history has been more consistently and repeatedly requested by
students than today's. Secondly, it's also
a tradition in the program to have the speakers introduced
by students from the programs. But before that introduction comes,
a few words from the president of Case Western Reserve University, please
join me in welcoming Dr. Edward Hundert. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Thank you very much, I want to
also welcome all of you here today, I especially wanna extend a welcome
to all of the emeritus faculty. We have over 100 emeriti joining us today, one of my favorite groups on campus for
this occasion. We are truly honored to share
our campus with a true master of contemporary literature. As was just said,
Kurt Vonnegut is in fact just the latest in a whole series about standing visitors
sponsored by the College Scholars Program. Which is a very special interdisciplinary
group of undergraduate students who apply their learning here to
various larger world concerns. Through group study, through community
service, through special programs for leadership skill development,
and so forth. Since the 1997-98 academic year,
the College Scholars Program has sponsored such campus visitors
through this program as Cornell West. Lech Walesa, Ralph Nator, Edward Albee, Steven J Gould, Susan Faludi,
and Susan Sontag. Of course, none of these as
was said has been more eagerly anticipated then the speaker
that we are about to hear. And I think Mr Vonnegut probably hears
this from everyone who introduces him, but I had a very similar experience. A large part of my high
school AP English class, thinking about literature is centered on
the recently released Slaughterhouse-Five. Which had a very big impact on my entire
experience of what literature is about. Mr Vonnegut is going to be introduced
by one of the college scholars, Leila Ibrahim,
please welcome Miss Ibrahim to the podium. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Most readers interested in the
fantastical literature are familiar with Kurt Vonnegut, particularly for
his use of science fiction. Those readers not interested in
the fantastic are familiar with him after being forced to read his books in school. Although unusual for this forum, Mr. Vonnegut's science fiction is frequently
comic not just in the black humor mode with which he has been tagged so
often but also in being simply funny. Mr. Vonnegut was born in
Indianapolis in 1922, a descendant of prominent
German American families. He attended Orchard Public School and
Short Ridge High School, where he edited the school's
daily newspaper. He went to college at Cornell for
a little over two years, where he studied biochemistry,
a subject at which he did not excel. He also wrote for the Cornell Daily Sun. In 1943, he enlisted in the US Army, where he was sent to Carnegie Institute
and the University of Tennessee for training in mechanical engineering
before being sent overseas. In 1944, he was taken prisoner
following the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium. He returned to the US in 1945 where
he was awarded the Purple Heart. After the war, Mr. Vonnegut married and entered a master's degree program in
anthropology at the University of Chicago. He also worked as a reporter for
the Chicago City News Bureau. His master's thesis titled,
Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales was
unanimously rejected. However, 25 years later, the University
of Chicago realized their mistake and finally awarded Mr Vonnegut
his MA in recognition for Cat's Cradles' contribution to
the field of cultural anthropology. After his thesis was rejected
he departed for Schenectady, New York to take a job in public relations
at a General Electric research lab. Mr Vonnegut left GE in 51 to devote
himself full time into writing, during the 50s, he published short
stories in national magazines. Player Piano,
his first novel appeared in 1952, Sirens of Titan was published in 1959,
followed by Mother Night in 1962. Cat's Cradle in 1963, God Bless You Mr.
Rosewater in 1965, and his most highly praised work,
Slaughterhouse-Five in 1969. A true master of contemporary American
literature and a graphic artist, he has written many more books,
both fiction and non-fiction, plays. Dozens of short stories and essays, and created numerous
drawings in different mediums. He has taught at the University of Iowa,
Harvard University, City University of New York,
and Smith College. There's also an unbelievable amount of
bands, including the Grateful Dead, who have been influenced by Mr.
Vonnegut's work. Apparently they were also forced
to read his books in school. Over the years, Mr. Vonnegut had come to
speak of finding writing more onerous. His novel, Galapagos in 1985 presented
scientific as well as literary challenges and his labors with his novel, Timequake
in 1997 extended for several years. As he describes it, writing is labor, and
the writer's reward arrives when he or she hands the manuscript to the editor and
says, it's yours. On a personal note, I wish to thank Mr. Vonnegut because I have also
attended public school. Studied chemistry for two years,
a subject at which I did not excel, and I find writing onerous as well. Thank you, Mr. Vonnegut,
for giving me hope. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor
to present to you Kurt Vonnegut. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Thank you. I look out at all you Adams and Eves out here and realize how
wide The generation gap can be. [LAUGH]
>> I used to be an Adam but I'm a Methuselah now. And when you get to be my age, you start
asking your kids what life is all about. And I asked my son Mark Vonnegut, so named in honor of Mark Twain,
what life was all about. He's a pediatrician, and he gave
what I think it a very good answer. He said, we are here to help each other
get through this thing, whatever it is. So I tell you that. And I wanna say too that no matter
how corrupt our government and corporations and Wall Street and
news media may yet become, the music will still
be perfectly wonderful. >> [LAUGH]
>> And if I. >> [APPLAUSE]
>> And if I ever die, God forbid-
>> [LAUGH] >> I want this for my epitaph. It's the only proof we ever needed
of the existence of God was music. This is a good place to say that,
isn't it? >> [LAUGH]
>> Now then. [COUGH]
>> I'm here to make news this afternoon, to put Cleveland on the map. >> [LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH] I am not running for president, although I know that a sentence in order to be complete has to
have both a subject and a verb. >> [LAUGH]
[APPLAUSE] >> Nor will I confess that I sleep with children. >> [LAUGH]
>> I will say, though, that my wife is the oldest
person I ever slept with. >> [LAUGH]
>> Here's the big news. I am suing Brown &
Williamson Tobacco Company of Louisville, Kentucky for billions, I hope. >> [LAUGH]
>> And you lawyers here, those in law school,
will be interested in this case, I think
>> I have never smoked anything but Pall Malls since I was 11 years old,
this is a Brown & Williamson product. On their package, for several years now, they've promised
to kill me but I'm still alive. >> [LAUGH]
>> 81 years old, thanks a lot, you dirty rats. [COUGH] The last thing
I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most important, most powerful people on
the face of the Earth were named Bush, Dick, and Colin. >> [LAUGH]
[APPLAUSE]. >> Who do I want to run on
the Democratic ticket for president? Well, we need an actor, as our form
of government now is television, a made-for-television movie. So we need an actor like
Arnold Schwarzenegger. An actual movie star is,
I think, Paul Newman maybe. I would say Peter Jennings, but
he wasn't born in this country, he was born in Canada. I have to say that it must be kind of
spooky for you people here at Case to be in a great institution like
this one with its laboratories and lecture halls and libraries. Knowing that this institution is within
the borders of a country where truth and reason and
lessons of history do not apply. And
>> [APPLAUSE] >> There's good news and there's bad news this afternoon, Case. The bad news is that the Martians
have landed in New York City, and they're staying at the Waldorf. The good news is that they
only eat homeless men, women, and children of all colors,
and they pee gasoline. >> [LAUGH]
>> Now, I'm only kidding, of course. >> [LAUGH]
>> As you know, so you know whether I'm kidding or
not, I'll go like this. That means I'm kidding. If it turns out that Cleveland is likely to be attacked
by terrorists, I'll go like this. Don't get the two signals mixed up. >> [LAUGH]
>> Now I'll have an experiment here. I will say something I
obviously don't believe and then signal that I'm not being serious. All right, how about this? It's join the Army and
defend democracy, okay? I'm sorry, that's the wrong signal. >> [LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH] [COUGH] Well anyway, seriously. If you keep up with current events
the way I do and supermarket tabloids. >> [LAUGH]
>> Then you know that a team of Martian anthropologists has been studying us for
the past ten years. They went home last week cuz
they knew how really awful global warming was about to become. Their space vehicle, incidentally,
wasn't a flying saucer, it was more of a flying soup tureen. And they are little, all right,
they're only four inches high, but they aren't green, they're mauve. Anyway, by way of farewell, their little mauve leader said in that teeny weeny,
tiny winy, tony little voice of hers that there were two things about our
culture no Martian could ever understand. And I won't imitate her voice
as I just can't go that high. What is it, she squeaked. What can it possibly be, she squeaked,
about blowjobs and golf? >> [LAUGH] >> What is it like to be this old? >> [LAUGH]
>> Thanks to Brown & Williamson. >> [LAUGH]
>> I can't parallel park worth a damn anymore, so
please don't watch when I try to do it. >> [LAUGH]
>> Yes, and to all practical purposes,
I am now a flaming neuter. >> [LAUGH]
>> I am as celibate as 50% of the heterosexual Roman Catholic clergy. >> [LAUGH]
>> But I have found that celibacy
is no root canal. It is So cheap and convenient. >> [LAUGH]
>> You don't have to say anything afterwards or do anything afterwards,
because there is no afterwards. >> [LAUGH]. >> And when my TV, which I call my
tantrum, waves boobs in my face and tells me that everybody but
me is going to get laid tonight, and this is a national emergency, so I've
got to rush out and buy some pills, or a car, or a gymnasium I can fold and
hide under my bed. I laugh like a hyena when
television tells me that. You know, and I know, that millions
upon millions of good Americans are not going to get laid tonight,
present company not excepted. And we flaming neuters vote. I look forward to a day when the President
of the United States no less, who probably isn't gonna get laid that
night either, proclaims Neuter Pride Day. >> [LAUGH]
>> And out of our closets we'll come, and we'll go marching up Main Streets all
over this boob-crazed democracy of ours. >> [LAUGH]
>> Our chins will be high, our shoulders squared, and
we'll be laughing like hyenas. All you flaming neuters,
you've found your leader here. Now, you and the cops,
you are certainly entitled to know, that since I'm going to spend
the night here in Cleveland, I'm both a Luddite and a humanist. I may stage a black mass tonight if I
can find a neocon baby to sacrifice. >> [LAUGH]
>> A Luddite is a person who hates certain
newfangled contraptions. Forbes Magazine asked
a bunch of us a while back to name our favorite technologies,
and I said, the Encyclopedia Britannica and my
address book, cuz they were alphabetical. >> [LAUGH]
>> Corner Mug Mailbox, I like a lot too,
because it looks like a big bullfrog. A big friendly bullfrog. And when I give it something to eat,
it goes ribbit. All right, I also like Sharpies. I think that is a major, major event,
give credit where credit is due. If they'd asked me which technologies I
hated most, I would have said, nuclear submarines armed with Poseidon missiles
with hydrogen bombs in their warheads. How did we the people ever come to pay
billions of bucks for such a preposterous, genocidal, ultimately
suicidal contraption? We were hornswaggled by super salesman for our armaments industry,
which is to say our federal government. >> [APPLAUSE]. >> What on earth use would we have for
this thing? And look,
we have a couple of them at least. Slumbering in fjords off Iceland or whatever, when on Earth would
we ever turn loose such gadgets? But we own them, by God. I hate computers for kids too. They cheat the kids out of
the vital experience of becoming. Instead of becoming, the kid learns how to
make the computer become what he himself, or herself, could have become without one. >> [APPLAUSE]
>> Actually, a computer can do the same
thing to a grownup. I have a son-in-law who's been
lobotomized by his computer. >> [LAUGH]
>> He doesn't have to know anything, because his computer knows everything. [COUGH] I ask him anything,
and he asks his computer. Cuz all I wanted was an answer, when
what I really wanted was a son-in-law. >> [LAUGH]
>> I tell you, is I myself have had a terrible
experience with it, and there's no longer such
a thing as a typewriter. No longer such, and
that's as though they took away my violin. You know, and I'd been a good violinist. But I think back in the old days, when I had a choice between
a typewriter or a computer. I have a Apple now,
which I just use as a word processor. I mean it tries to talk to me sometimes,
and I just tell it to go engage in airborne intercourse with
the hole on a rolling donut. >> [LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH] Anyway, back in the old days when there
was still typewriters, and you could choose between
either typewriter or. Or a computer. I, of course, chose typewriter,
and it was my violin. And there in New York, my wife and I work
at home, we both have offices in our home. It's a four-story house in New York. I work on the top floor,
she works on the ground floor. She is the photojournalist Jill Krementz, who has published three books
to every one of my one. One of them was a very young dancer,
for instance. Anyway, back in the days when
I still used a typewriter. I'd be up on the top floor, and I'd be typing away pages,
and be quite messy, and I'd mark them up with pen or pencil,
and make corrections and everything. And then I'd pick up the telephone
call up my typist, can you imagine? There used to be as
such a trade as typist. And all over this country, it's mostly
women who made substantial contributions to their family incomes, because they
could type without making a mistake. They should have been concert pianists,
they were so deft. I hope they haven't all
turned to crime now. >> [LAUGH]
>> Anyway. In the good old days [COUGH] I'd
have a bunch of pages finally, really messy but responsibly edited. I'd pick up a phone and
call up my typist, Carol. I'd say, hi, Carol. How are you, honey? And she'd say, hi, Kurt. What's up? Wasn't that nice? Talk about safe sex. >> [LAUGH]
>> Anyway, I'd say, I got some more pages. She said okay good,
hurray, send them over. So I'd ask her, I know she had
back trouble for a while and she's got a husband who, well,
never mind what her problem is with him. Anyway, I'd tell her, all right,
I'm gonna mail you these pages. And she said, okay. I look forward to seeing them. And so I've taken these pages. And I've put them together
with a paper clip. And so I take these messy pages down two
flights of stairs to the ground floor, where my wife works, and
I dance on the way down. This is very good exercise. And, what, Microsoft,
what's the name of the guy who runs it, the richest man in the world? Anyway, he doesn't seem to
realize we're dancing animals. Anyway, I danced down the front steps, and
doing some pretty good stuff, may I say. >> [LAUGH]
>> And my wife hears me going past her workstation there, and
she says, where are you going? And her favorite reading when she was
a child was Nancy Drew, Girl Detective. And so I say I'm going to buy an envelope. And she said, one envelope? Why don't you buy 100 envelopes and
put them in a closet up where you work? And I pretend I hadn't heard her. >> [LAUGH]
>> And out into the world I go with my pages. And what a figure I am. I am a man with a mission. And I go dancing down our front steps and
out on the sidewalk, sort of an understated buck and
wing, I would say. And people are so cheered up and excited to see a man so full of purpose,
what can those papers be? They must be terribly important,
and he must be terribly important. And may I say, I think I look quite sexy. >> [LAUGH]
>> Anyway, I go down the sidewalk. And I'm headed for a news store where
they sell not only magazines and newspapers, but lottery tickets and
stationary, and so on. And on the way, I may stop a woman and ask her what kind of crazy
dog that is she's walking. It looked like a half Labrador and
half Chihuahua. Or if a fire engine is going by,
I might give him thumbs up, cuz I'm all for firemen. >> [LAUGH]
>> Anyway, off I go, man with a purpose. And I go into the news store there. And there's a long line,
mostly for lottery tickets. But I know their stock, and so I go back and I get an 8.5 by 11 envelope, manila envelope. I'm a celebrity, but
everybody is very polite and pretends they don't know who I am. >> [LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH] And so just like another Joe, I take my place at the end of
the line with my envelope. And I like to talk to people. And also, I like to look at all
the boobs on the cover of the magazines. >> [LAUGH]
>> Anyway, do you know anybody who ever won a lottery
or won any money in a lottery or what happened to your foot and
that sort of thing. And we chat and everything,
and time goes by. And finally, now look,
this store was then, no longer, was then owned by Hindus. The woman behind cash register,
the wife, had a jewel in her forehead. Now, that's worth a trip right there. Anyway, I finally reach the head of
the line, acting like just anybody else, and pay for the envelope,
which is now mine. And I take my pages, and
I put them inside there. And the flap on the envelope, and very cunningly designed,
has both mucilage. It has a hole in it too,
so that a easily bendable metal prong can be spread
out to seal it twice. Well, all right, so
there are in the store still, I licked the underside of the envelope,
which is pretty sexy. And anyway, I seal the envelope and the little fin diddly, the meal fin
diddly, I don't know what it's called, but it comes up through the hole and
I spread that out. Now, look at this. Two of the largest parts of our
brain are devoted to the most sensitive parts of our body,
our fingertips and the tongue. And I have exercised both of those. >> [LAUGH]
>> Totally involved them in this process of simply sealing the envelope. So I put Carol's address on the envelope,
and I head two blocks south to
a postal convenience center. Now, My heart was beating hard when I first talked to Carol on
the telephone because it's erotic. >> [LAUGH]
>> But it's really pounding is I approach
a postal convenience center because I back then was secretly in love with
the woman being the counter there. She has disappeared. I don't know what
the hell happened to her. I don't know what the hell
happened to Carol. >> [LAUGH]
>> Anyway, this is very, very near the United Nations. And so what's it like? Every imaginable race is represented. And what it's like to live as close to the
UN as I do was like being at a dog show, all these different breeds,
they're interesting. Anyway, I go into the postal
convenience center there and there are all these foreigners in there. And the woman I love, again, there's
a long line, is behind the counter. I've never seen her from the armpits up
because she's always behind the counter. And she's also in a blue smock,
the official blue smock the post office department
with the eagle on the bosom. But what she does with her neck and head to cheer us up ever day,
it's so generous. It's never the same thing. And she knows she's doing this,
she's making us happy, and it's so generous of her cuz it
must be a lot of work. Sometimes her hair will be all frizzy,
and that's kind of funny, then the next time it'll be really
straight, sometimes it will be in braid. Now this is to entertain us because
she knows how drab our lives are. >> [LAUGH]
>> And I don't know if she was born without eyebrows or
whether she plucked them out. In any case, every day she looks different because she can
paint on a different set of eyebrows. >> [LAUGH]
>> One day she'll look like Betty Boop and the next day, she'll look like
the sister of Count Dracula. >> [LAUGH]
>> And I missed this, but I heard that one day she actually painted on a Hitler
mustache, and I wish I had done that. But she was doing that
sorta thing to cheer us up. And so all right, I talked to foreigners
there in the line ahead of me and not giving a sign as how much
I love this generous woman. And if it's a Chinese I might say to him how grateful Americans
are to the Chinese for Moveable type, and pasta, and gun powder. If it was an Arab, obviously an Arab,
is I might think him, I said, for it, the Arabs for
the numbers we use, for algebra, and that's why George Bush hates the Arabs,
cuz they invented algebra. >> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> But anyway. And finally, I get to the head of the
line, and here I am face to face with her. God, she looks wonderful, I think
it was black lipstick that day, and I'm not kidding you, talk about lipstick,
it could be axe murder red, it could be any color and it's all so exciting, and
it all cheers us up, and there's all kinds of stuff hanging from her ears,
and around her neck all the time. One time she actually hung fresh
radishes around her neck to cheer us up. >> [LAUGH]
>> Anyway, I keep a perfectly straight face,
and I think so does she. I just simply hand her the envelope and
I'm asking her to weigh it, and sell me the proper number of
stamps to send it on its way, and I think, I think if I had broken the spell,
if I had suddenly blurted out, I love you, we both would have fallen to
pieces as though made of glass and just been shattered, because I would
have broken something very magical. And so, all I said is, how much? >> [LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH] And so she tells me how much, and I pay her, and out I go, and here, I've got this,
what was once a blank envelope, empty envelope, full of pages. And, It's addressed. It has become an animal raring to go. It's got a stamp on it,
it's got stamps on it. What a transformation,
this is no ordinary envelope anymore. [COUGH] I go to the mailbox,
my friend on the corner, the big bullfrog, and
I feed it the envelope. And it says ribbit, and it swallows it. And I go home and
I have had one hell of a good time. >> [LAUGH]
>> And let me tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around. >> [LAUGH]
>> And don't let anybody ever
tell you any different. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Now, see what I've got here, it's got some other good stuff. >> [LAUGH]
>> All right, so now you know what a luddite is,
and I've also said I'm a humanist. That is a person, like both my parents and all four of my grandparents, who behaved
as honorably and decently as he or she can without any expectation, or
rewards, or punishment in the afterlife. A humanist serves as best he or she can,
the only abstraction with which he or she has any real familiarity,
which is our community, and I am honorary Present of
the American Humanist Association having succeeded the late
great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that totally
functionless capacity. >> [LAUGH]
>> We had a memorial service for Isaac a while back, and at one point
I said Isaac is up in heaven now. This was the funniest thing I could
have said to an audience of humanists. Rolled him in the aisles and with several
minutes before order could be restored. >> [LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH] So again, if I ever die, God forbid,
I hope some of you will say that Kirk is up in heaven now,
that's my favorite joke. >> [LAUGH]
>> Both a luddite and a humanist. You know what a twerp was when I was
in high school in Indianapolis a long time ago? It was a guy who stuffed false
teeth up his rear end and bit the buttons off
the backseats of taxi cabs. >> [LAUGH] >> You know what a snarf was? It was a guy who sniffed
girls' bicycle seats. >> [LAUGH ]
>> Now then, where the hell are we? >> [LAUGH]
>> I've lost track of how long I've been speaking,
because I didn't start my stopwatch. [COUGH] I have had a technical education,
and every time I've been on a faculty
I've been in the English department, although I've never been an English major,
and I have tried to bring scientific
thinking to lyric criticism and there's been very little gratitude for
this. >> [LAUGH]
>> All right, now stories have very simple shapes,
one that computers can understand. This is a GI axis. Good fortune, ill fortune. Death, terrible disease, poverty, but
it's just good health, happiness up here. This is the BE axis. Beginning, entropy. >> [LAUGH]
>> Now then, I'll give you a marketing tip. There's the people who
can afford educations, and buying books, and magazines,
and all that, and can read. Don't like to read about
people who are poor or sick. So start your story up here. >> [LAUGH]
>> Now the simplest story, and
if you stay home and watch this on television,
it'll be told again, and again, and again, and
nobody ever gets tired of this story. I call it man in a hole, but
it needn't be about a man in a hole. >> [LAUGH]
>> Somebody gets into trouble, gets out of it again. >> [LAUGH] >> The far end is a little higher than where we began, because the reader thinks,
well bygone, I'm a human being too. I must have that much in reserve
if I get into trouble or whatever. >> Now another story that's very popular,
and none of these are copyrighted. >> [LAUGH]
>> Is I call it boy meets girl, but it needn't be about a boy or a girl. It's somebody On a day like any other day. >> [LAUGH]
>> Comes across something perfectly wonderful, boy. >> [LAUGH]
>> This is my lucky day. >> [LAUGH]
>> Shit. >> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> And gets it back again. >> [LAUGH] >> Now As it's been said, is I have a masters degree in anthropology
from the University of Chicago. So does Saul Bellow. I don't know what you wanna make of that. >> [LAUGH]
>> Anyway, I, it was a big mistake. I can't stand primitive people,
they're so stupid. >> [LAUGH] >> Anyway, proof of their stupidity was I went to the library and
dug up stories they told. You know they'd been gathered by
missionaries and ethnographers and imperialists of other sorts. And boy, their stories stunk. They were just dead level,
like the B E axis there. We came to a river, we came to a mountain,
little beaver died and you can't tell. >> [LAUGH]
>> You can't tell what the good news is what the bad news is. >> [LAUGH]
>> You look at the wonderful rise and fall of our stories, and
you know, they deserve to lose. >> [LAUGH]
>> Another story, It's very popular and
it breaks my rule, starts down here. It's a young girl, teenage,
I guess, maybe 17, 18. Why is she so low? Well her mother's died. That's reason enough, right? And her father has remarried almost
immediately to a terrible old battle-ax with two mean daughters. >> [LAUGH]
>> And there's a party at the palace that night. >> [LAUGH]
>> You've heard it. >> [LAUGH]
>> All right, so she has to help her new mother and
her sisters, her new sisters get dressed for
this party. And she doesn't get to go. They said no, no,
she's not good enough to go, but they are. So does she get even sadder? No, she's a stout-hearted little girl, whose maximum grief was
death of her mother. So everybody leaves for the party,
and the fairy godmother shows up. And gives her panty hose,
mascara, perfume, every means of transportation,
carriage with horses and everything, everything you need to
go to a party and have a good time. So she goes and
the prince falls in love with her. Now you must realize, she is so heavily made up that her own
relatives don't recognize her. >> [LAUGH]
>> Okay, so the clock strikes 12 as promised. And so she loses all the stuff,
it's all taken away. And the fairy godmother
said that was gonna happen. This is a very steep drop here, it doesn't
take long for a clock to strike 12. >> [LAUGH]
>> Does she drop down to the same level? No, for the rest of her life she remembers
the time she was the belle of the ball. So she poops along at this
considerably improved. >> [LAUGH]
>> Level. >> [LAUGH]
>> Until the shoe fits and she becomes off scale happy. >> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE]
>> Now. There's a Franz Kafka story. >> [LAUGH]
>> Very pessimistic, starts down here. >> [LAUGH]
>> There's this rather unattractive, not particularly nice-looking,
not very personable young man. Who has a really lousy job and
disagreeable relatives. And so it's time for
him to go to work again. And he has turned into a cockroach. >> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> All right, now does this have any use in criticizing literature? Well, I think perhaps it does. I think this rise and
fall is in fact artificial. It pretends that we know more
about life than we really do. And what's perhaps a true
masterpiece cannot be crucified on a cross of this design. Well, all right, let's try Hamlet, okay? Well, I don't have to draw a new level. The sexes are reversed, but he's in
the same situation as Cinderella and a little older. His father has died, and
his mother has remarried his uncle. And so he is depressed as Cinderella. So, He is feeling very unhappy and
depressed and everything. And his friend Horatio comes in and
says, hey, Hamlet, there's this
thing up on the parapet. I think you better go talk to it. >> [LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH] He says, it's your father. And so Hamlet goes up there. And this thing, whatever it is. Now we don't know, as any of you who've
horsed around with Ouija boards, or with any sort of seances or anything. You know there are malicious spirits
around who are looking for saps like you. >> [LAUGH]
>> Who are going to find ways to hurt you. Give you very bad advice. So to this day we do not know whether that
thing up there on the parapet was really the ghost of his father and
whether it was telling him the truth. But the thing said, I'm your father. I was murdered by the man
who's now the king. And you've got to avenge me. Well since we don't know what it was,
what it is, it's neither good news or
bad news, cuz we don't know. And so Hamlet says, I know what I'll do. I'll stage a play, I'll hire actors and get them to act out the way
the murder was described to me. And I'll have the murder suspect watch,
and watch his reaction. Well okay, so he does that. It's a flop. >> [LAUGH]
>> Nothing much happens. And so
Hamlet is up in his mother's chamber, right after this flop and talking. And, The curtains wave or the air,
it waves, the drapes wave. And so he figures,
his uncle is back there, his new father, supposedly, and so
he's gonna finally be decisive. And he pulls out his sword,
sticks it through the drapes. Who falls out? This windbag, Polonius. >> [LAUGH]
>> And Shakespeare regards him as a total fool, and [COUGH]
yeah, giving just the kind of dumb advice
parents give their kids when they go away. Neither a borrower nor a lender be. Thanks a lot, Dad. What a swell time. >> [LAUGH]
>> Anyway, is this terrible? Is Hamlet going to get arrested or what? No, it's neither good nor bad news. >> [LAUGH]
>> Just something that happened. All right, so finally, Hamlet gets in the duel and is killed. If he goes to heaven he's off scale,
happy like Cinderella. If he's going to hell he's off scale,
unhappy like Kafka's cockroach. But we don't know. I don't think Hamlet believed in
heaven and hell any more than I do. I mean, that Shakespeare didn't. So, I'll disprove to you that Shakespeare
was as poor a storyteller as any Arapaho or-
>> [LAUGH] >> But I haven't. I have, in fact, told you why this
is respected as a masterpiece. We are so seldom told the truth. In Hamlet, Shakespeare tells us. We don't know enough about life
to know what the good news is and the bad news is and
we respond to that, thank you, Bill. >> [LAUGH]
>> Now, if, You think all we do is we pretend
to know what the good news is and what the bad news is, and you think
about our training in this matter, all we do is echo the feelings
of people around us. Imagine a little kid, three years old, maybe four, and
the parents are so excited. They have the most wonderful
piece of news for this kid. And this little kid,
little boy, what can it be? Here's the terrific news, the bomb shell. It's your birthday. What could be a more empty
piece of information? >> [LAUGHS]
>> And so the kid goes [SOUND]. >> [LAUGH]
>> And it goes our team won. [SOUND] Our candidate won. [SOUND] So
although I don't believe in heaven, I would like to go up to such a place
once just to ask somebody in charge, hey, what was the good news and what what
was the bad news cuz we can't be sure. Now every lecture I've ever given has
included my tribute to my uncle Alex, my mother's kid brother who
was a graduate of Harvard and a wise man, but just an insurance
salesman in Indianapolis. He was childless. But what uncle Alex found
objectionable about so many human beings is that they so
seldom noticed it when they were happy. And so we would be sitting under an apple
tree, for instance on a July afternoon, drinking lemonade and
talking about this and that, practically buzzing like honey bees. And Uncle Alex would stop everything and
say, wait a minute, stop,
if this isn't nice I don't know what is. And so he would do that again and
again, and it was very good advice. And I've taken it in, and
I hope that you will take up this habit too of noticing when things
are really awfully nice, and say if this isn't nice,
I don't know what is. Now then,
I don't know how long have I talked, I've lost track,
as I'm supposed to speak for 45 minutes. Anybody know how long I've spoken? >> [INAUDIBLE]
>> About 45, what? All right, well, I'm going to ask for
a show of hands now, so get set for that. >> [LAUGH]
>> And this is for everybody here. Everybody, no matter what age,
how many of you have had a teacher at any point in your whole educational career, primary school, high school,
college, grad school, how many of you have had a teacher
who made you prouder to be alive, happier to be alive than you had
previously believed possible? Would you show up your hands please,
those of you who have? All right, now then would you please say the name of that teacher to
someone sitting next to you? [CROSSTALK] If this isn't nice, I don't know what is. Music, please. >> [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC] [APPLAUSE]
