Le Guin's commencement address — titled 'A Left-Handed Commencement Address' — systematically inverted every convention of the genre. Where most speakers wished graduates success, Le Guin declared: 'No, I do not wish you success. I don't even want to talk about it. I want to talk about failure.' The argument was not that success was undesirable but that it was structurally dependent on others' deprivation. The American Dream required that most people never achieve it. Le Guin's alternative vision was radically modest: 'I hope you have kids — not hordes of them, a couple, enough. I hope they're beautiful. I hope you and they have enough to eat, and a place to be warm and clean in, and friends, and work you like doing.' The audience, expecting inspirational rhetoric about conquering the world, instead received a benediction of sufficiency.