Once in a great while I spam my mailing list with something which I think
is Really Neat. Like the "Kurt Vonnegut MIT Commencement Address".
I was suckered. And to complicate matters, in trying to keep some useable
room on my hard drive, I trash most outgoing mail as soon as it's sent (I
usually have some idea of what I said, after all), so I have to reconstruct
the list of addressees, which can't be done perfectly. *sigh*
So here's what I was told:
Dave Locke <davelocke@fan.net> wrote:
>Neil -
>
>A fast note to let you know the Vonnegut commencement address is a phony.
>A good phony, but a phony. And it's getting sprayed all across the net.
>
>Yes, I'm positive.
>
>Bob Weide, Vonnegut's friend and the author & co-producer of the movie
>rendition of "Mother Night", wrote:
>:Yesterday I confirmed for the Vonnegut Newsgroup that the MIT address
>:attributed to Kurt, and spread all over the Web, was a hoax. It was not
>:written nor delivered by Kurt at MIT or anywhere. Copies of this thing were
>:E-mailed to me from all corners -- even received one from Scotland.
>:
>:Well, it seems as though my response spread through the Internet almost as
>:thoroughly as the speech itself. Today (8/1), my E-mailbox was full of
>:letters from strangers, responding to my post. In any event, I can now
>:clear up part of this mystery:
>:
>:There is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune named Mary Schmich. The words
>:were hers, in her column from the June 1 issue of the Trib. She never
>:passed it off as Vonnegut s, nor was his name ever evoked in the column. In
>:fact, her column contained a prologue, missing on the Internet version,
>:which I will reprint here...
>:
>:****************************************************************************
>:
>:ADVICE, LIKE YOUTH, PROBABLY JUST WASTED ON THE YOUNG
>:
>: Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some
>:world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who'd
>:rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow
>:our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there's no
>:reason we can't entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for
>:Graduates.
>:
>: I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my
>:attempt.
>:
>: Ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 97....
>:
>:**************************************************************************
****
>:
>:The missing piece of this puzzle is: Who is Culprit Zero? That is, who
>:originally placed it on the Internet, crediting it to Kurt? Mary Schmich,
>:whom I spoke with today (a very nice woman, by the way), was horrified at
>:the idea that anyone would think the deed was hers, or that she was trying
>:to rip Kurt off. She told me she had read Cat s Cradle back in college,
>:but that was about it. She s never heard him speak and couldn t consciously
>:duplicate his style if she wanted to. She even tracked Kurt down on the
>:phone today to explain what had happened and confirm her lack of
>:culpability. Kurt was, of course, good natured about it. (Frankly, my fear
>:is that this will be the new Venus on the Halfshell and that Kurt will be
>:hounded over the next few years by people asking him about his MIT address.)
>:
>:One last point: Mary said that when her article originally appeared in the
>:Tribune, she certainly received a favorable reaction and some nice phone
>:calls, but that was all. Suddenly, the same words are credited to a
>:well-known author, and it s being quoted and E-mailed all over the world
>:within hours. Talk about the power of name recognition. Also, another
>:lesson in individual responsibility, or lack thereof, in the computer age.
>:
>:I beleive Mary is now working on a column about all this for the weekend
>: Tribune.
John Gilmore sent me the same thing . . .
Spider Robinson wrote:
>Weirdly, this address, which I've been forwarded by 3 different people, has
>been positively confirmed to be a forgery. By whom, and for what
>conceivable purpose, I don't know...but Vonnegut stoutly maintains it's
>totally bogus...though he admits to liking several of the lines.
>
>Who in his right mind would want to be mistaken for a WRITER? Even a
>comparatively successful one? It's like that old joke about the starlet
>who was so stupid she banged the writer...
I suspect it's more "the folk process" . . .
Neil
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:33 PDT