About "Purported Vonnegut Speech"

I first heard about this speech through an email from my stepmother, Esme. At that time, it was labeled as a speech by Kurt Vonnegut given at the MIT Commencement ceremony. Being a Vonnegut fan, I both read and enjoyed it. Sadly, as time went by, it became known that this speech was a sham, and that it was actually a column written by Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune in the 1-June-1997 edition of the paper. Someone had attached Kurt Vonnegut's name to it, and then it took off on the Internet like crazy. Says something about the Internet: a famous name takes something far, and don't trust anything you read on the Net!

To see the original article* in the Chicago Tribune, see:

• "Advice, Like Youth, Probably Just Wasted on the Young"
  * (Wait! Don't Click On That Link Yet! It looks like the Chicago Tribune has "reorganized" their site, and this article appears to no longer be available. If you want to read the "original" you may have to do a site search, and it appears there may even be a charge for it! But if you want to do it anyway, search on keywords "schmich" and "advice" and "youth" in the 1997 archives.)

For more information about this, see some of the following links:

• Wooden Spoons: Kurt Vonnegut
• USA Today: Tech Report

For more information about Urban Legends in general, see:

• The AFU and Urban Legends Archive

Email me, won't you? Let me know what you think!

This page was updated on 19-Mar-2001.