What Now? Read Online Free PDF Page A

glorious work it is.
    Maybe this is the moment you shift from seeing What now as one more thing to check off the list and start to see it as two words worth living by. This is the day you leave this campus, but if you keep your heart and mind open and are willing to see all of the possibilities that are available to you, it will only be the start of your education.
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    If you’re trying to find out what’s coming next, turn off everything you own that has an OFF switch and listen. Make up some plans and change them. Identify your heart’s truest desire and don’t change that for anything. Be proud of yourself for the work you’ve done.
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    Be grateful to all the people who helped you do it. Write to them and let them know how you are. You are, every one of you, someone’s favorite unfolding story. We will all be anx-ious to see what happens next.
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    P O S T S C R I P T
    None of us ever outgrows the need for a teacher. It is a fact I recently rediscovered when I was asked to give this commencement address. I was flattered by the invitation and I worked very hard on my speech. What I came up with in the end was something I deemed to be both serious and grand. I stuck to the admonishment of Ezra Pound’s that had meant so much to me when I was an undergraduate: Make it new. I thought I had done exactly that. My speech was not about me, my time in school, or my experiences of trying to become a writer. My speech was ponderous and impersonal, full of necessary information. Like all medicine, it was slightly bitter going down, but I was sure it 8 4

    would do this class of graduating seniors a world of good.
    In the small cusp of time I had
    between writing the address and delivering it, I was by chance scheduled to give a talk with my favorite former college professor, Allan Gurganus. Much of what I know about writing is something Allan taught me. I admire him both as a novelist and as a person who knows a thing or two about how to live a fully engaged life. Allan had stepped up to the podium at Sarah Lawrence to give a graduation address many years before me, and when I told him I was going to follow in his footsteps he was pleased. He said he’d like to read what I’d written. I said yes without a moment’s hesitation.
    It had been many, many years since I had turned a paper in for my teacher’s 8 6

    review, but wasn’t this the perfect moment?
    Wouldn’t Allan’s critique be just the thing to make going back to Sarah Lawrence complete? As soon as I was home again I sent it to him, then settled in to wait for my high marks.
    His e-mail reply came quickly. “The bit about your father works,” he said. “You might be able to build something around that.”
    I checked my speech again. The bit about my father was nothing but a passing reference, one lonesome sentence. What about the rest of it?
    “No,” he said. “Sorry. No.”
    Walking that careful line between gentle and firm, my favorite teacher was then forced to tell his grown-up student that her commencement speech could not be saved. If 8 7

    you are curious as to its content I would urge you to use your imagination. You will not come up with anything as lifeless as what I had written. Allan said it should be about me, my time in college, my life as a writer. He said it should be funny. In short, it should be everything it wasn’t. This was not a situation that called for a rewrite. It was time to let the whole thing go gentle into that good night.
    I sat on my couch for a long time and stared out the window. I had no interest in starting over again, but there are some people whom we grant the role of oracle in our lives and when they speak—rarely, gravely—we are well-advised to listen. When I had written my new speech (a shorter version of this book), I did not send it back to Allan. I didn’t need to.
    After all, I am still a good student. I had done everything he told me.
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