Commencement Address, Wilkes University
Mailer's roughly 1,000-word commencement address at Wilkes University, 27 May 1995, on how the Cold War shaped American lives — its end leaving the country's 'fragments' scattered 'in all directions.' Excerpted in some 70 newspapers.
Mailer’s commencement address at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania — J. Michael Lennon‘s university — delivered 27 May 1995 (about 1,000 words), where he also received an honorary doctorate. He took the Cold War as his theme: Americans, he said, had been “like magnetic filings in the power of a huge electromagnet … almost all of us pointed in the same direction. When the Cold War ended, it was as if the great switch on this huge electromagnet was released and now all the fragments went in all directions.” He closed by challenging the graduates “to anticipate the glorious, and exciting, and fearful, and incredible days and years that await you.” The speech was excerpted, via an Associated Press story, in at least 70 newspapers (95.20, 95.21).