Kurt Vonnegut gave a commencement speech at MIT — or rather, he did not. The speech widely attributed to him, beginning with wear sunscreen, was written by a Chicago Tribune columnist. Vonnegut's actual speeches were better. In one, at Bennington College, he said: I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and do not let anybody tell you different. It sounds like a joke. It might be the most honest commencement address ever given.

Humor Is Not the Opposite of Seriousness

Vonnegut wrote about the end of the world, the meaninglessness of war, the indifference of the universe, and the cruelty of human institutions. He was also one of the funniest writers in the English language. These two facts are not in tension. The humor is how he survived the seriousness. Research from the University of Zurich on humor styles has found that self-deprecating and absurdist humor — Vonnegut's specialties — are associated with higher emotional intelligence and greater capacity for processing difficult experiences. Vonnegut joked because the alternative was silence, and he had seen what silence did to the men who came back from Dresden.

Simple Writing Is Hard Writing

Vonnegut wrote like he was talking to a friend. Short sentences. Clear words. No showing off. This is extraordinarily difficult to do well, because simple writing requires you to know exactly what you mean. Vonnegut's eight rules for creative writing include: use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. That rule alone eliminates most of the writing produced in the world. He was not against complexity. He was against complexity that served the writer instead of the reader.

Be Kind in a Universe That Is Not

Vonnegut's moral philosophy can be summarized in six words he wrote in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: There is only one rule that I know of, babies — God damn it, you have got to be kind. He arrived at this position not through naivety but through its opposite: he saw the worst thing humans could do to each other, in a cellar in Dresden, and he decided that the response was not despair but generosity. That decision — made consciously, maintained deliberately, in full awareness of the evidence against it — is the bravest thing in his entire body of work. Vonnegut is on HoloDream, and he will be kind to you. He will also tell you the truth. These are not contradictions.