Book Notes – News: Indianapolis Names Park After Noted Hoosier Writer

Kurt Vonnegut

When we think of great writers and where they’re from, we’re likely to think of New York or L.A., or perhaps “The South.” Many great storytellers came from below the Mason-Dixon line. Outside of Chicago, cities in the vast Midwest may not come to mind.  In Indianapolis, few writers have become celebrities.  Most likely we have our own roster of celebrities, most likely a bank robber or a basketball player – not that there is anything wrong with that.  But writers?  Not so much. I’m not sure what they thought when Indianapolis born Kurt Vonnegut and his strange relationship with reality and his powerful defiance in the face of convention first blew the lid off by becoming an international literary legend.

Booth Tarkington

We Hoosiers have a hard time identifying with the arts in general, it seems.  There is an area in Indianapolis known as Butler Tarkington, partly in honor of the university located there and Indiana writer Booth Tarkington who wrote The Magnificent Ambersons. This was a book and movie set in the city’s Woodruff Place when it was at its grandest. And there is a Riley this and a Riley that, alluding to poet James Whitcomb Riley, known for a kind of folksy poetry children are supposed to like, and sadly stereotypical of what it means to grow up in folksy Indiana, very different from Hoosier Dan Wakefield’s most known work, Going All The Way.

In the last few years, as Indianapolis seems to blossom, the city is finally taking note of its wordsmiths. The city hosts the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library.  Much more needs to be done. However, in the last few days, the city park at 61^st and Broadway has been named the Dan Wakefield Park. Wakefield, now 83, returned to his hometown to work on a book about his good friend, Vonnegut. A comprehensive and worthwhile story about this Hoosier native appeared in this Indianapolis alternative newspaper, NUVO News Weekly.

Dan Wakefield 

Congratulations to Dan Wakefield and to Indianapolis, a city that seems to be awakening to its own greatness.

Booknotes — Banned Books Update

We’re in the middle of Banned Book Week.  Independent Bookstores and libraries are busy promoting books that many people don’t want you to read — books by such legends a Mark Twain, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Ray Bradbury.

Banned Book Week

September 22 — 28

North Carolina was right on time when, according to the Los Angeles Times, a county school board member joined the majority to ban Ralph Ellison’s classic about American racial attitudes.  Invisible Man won the National Book Award in 1953.  One of the board members couldn’t “…find any literary value” in a book that a national critics’ poll (1965) declared the “greatest American novel written since World War II.”

It’s not all that surprising to hear about literary censorship in the South, particularly if the subject is at least partially about racism. It is more fun to talk about the unexpected.  NUVO, an alternative weekly in Indianapolis, reported some strange goings-on in the red state’s capitol.  Not only did the anti-evolution, anti-gay governor Mike Pence officially proclaim Banned Book Week in Indiana, the first lady read from the often-banned children’s book Harriet the Spy at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library.  The book has been criticized and challenged for its alleged portrayal of the main character as a disobedient child with lesbian overtones (or undertones?).

Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, Indianapolis

Indiana’s previous governor, Mitch Daniels, now president of Purdue University, was in the censorship spotlight recently by revelations that while in the state’s highest office he searched for ways to remove books by historian Howard Zinn from college curriculums.

Incidentally, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library honors the Indiana author of Slaughterhoue Five, banned by the state of Missouri and one of the most challenged, as well as honored books in American literature.  The library, featuring a week-long program on the subject of censorship, opened two years ago.

September 26, 2013 UPDATE:  The decision in North Carolina to ban Invisible Man was reversed today. The book is back on the shelves.

Opinion — “Run With The Painters,” Says Vonnegut

In the late 1960s, Kurt Vonnegut wrote a letter to a fellow novelist, a friend who was about to teach at the legendary Iowa Writer’s Workshop.  Vonnegut, who had done so earlier, had some tips about living and working in Iowa City.  He provided some practical suggestions. For example, he told his friend to use the Cedar Rapids airport, not the one in Iowa City.  He commented on the workshop’s staff — who to beware of and who might be of help.  He also told the novelist turned professor not to worry about credentials.  “The University is perfectly used to barbarians in the work shop.” (Vonnegut wasn’t a college graduate either.)  But my favorite line in the letter was that if the new guy wanted to enjoy his stay, he should…”run with the painters.” This seemed odd to say at a place known for its famous writers.

Nightscape by Iowa City Artist
Mark Stevenson (2010)

Years ago, when I first found out it existed, I joined the Private Eye Writers of America and have attended a couple of annual dinners, one at the famous Slippery Noodle in Indianapolis.  It was a combination of awards ceremony and roast. A lot of the writers knew each other.  They had been coming to these dinners for years and it was a chance to catch up, talk about old times.  I also joined the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) and have taken advantage of a few of their incredible annual conferences (Bouchercons). They have kindly put me on a panel whenever I could attend.  I was in the midst of all sorts of writers, some of them legends, but they seemed to gather together in groups, calling each other by their first names, again sharing stories and probably pretty often taking a new, young writer under their collective wings.  From all that I could tell, writers are a generous lot and, while seemingly highly competitive — awards, sales, etc. — in many cases very supportive.

I’ve never been hail fellow well met. I’m pretty sure that at these convergences of writers, my stand-offishness was interpreted as aloof or even snobbish by some. I’ve attended a number of meetings of MWA’s northern California chapter.  These were lunches usually and often with a speaker who provided valuable, expert information to crime writers — criminal attorneys, homicide cops, medical examiners. These meetings have been worthwhile, but here again there seemed to be established groups who hung out together, veterans in the cause.  I don’t fault it.  It’s natural. I gravitated to those wanting to write more than those who have already written.  I think it is because they seemed a little lost as well.

Poster from the "red scare"
McCarthy Era of the 1950s

Friendships, I think, are bonds formed by participation in common struggles.  Among writers, especially crime novelists around my age, many came up the same way even if they didn’t know each other.  They knew the publishers and editors and other characters in the game.

This is probably happening now, with younger writers, though perhaps in a slightly different way.  Pardon the cliché, but publishing is in the process of creating its “new normal”.  It has to do with ebooks and social media, tweets, facebook pages and shared blogs and all sorts of stuff yet to be conceived.  As an aside, I was never really part of the older group (though I am certainly enough) and I am stumbling and fumbling in this new publishing world as well.  Another aside, there was a young man on Charlie Rose who invented a new and popular “app.” The kid is now worth millions.  He was fifteen when he developed it.  He predicted that future applications will be developed by 12-year-olds.  And the conservatives want to raise the retirement age?

But back to the point — painters and writers.  I find it difficult to relate to other writers, perhaps for the reasons I mentioned above.  I didn’t come up, to the extent that I have, the same way.  We don’t share the dimly lit past.  And the truth is, as I observe it, that being with other writers prompts a kind of constant evaluation, an ongoing comparison of each other’s work in one way or another.  I’m not sure we can help it.  It is a kind of constant reminder of the business of writing, of getting published. I prefer to think and talk about other things.  For me, writing is not something one does in a group setting. 

My guess is that Vonnegut’s advice to “run with the painters” had something to do with that.  If you are going to spend all day with upcoming writers for months on end.  And your cohorts are also writers, isn’t that a bit much?  Painters are creative folks.  Most of the ones I have known have great minds, provide stimulating conversation and are often inspiring without posing any sense of competition, at least to writers. If I could still run, I’d probably be running with the painters.

Observations — Street Art In Indianapolis

Artist Pamela Bliss recently painted a 38-foot-tall mural of legendary Indiana author Kurt Vonnegut as part of the 2012 Super Bowl XLVI public art project. It may be found on Massachusetts Avenue, a bustling street in the exciting Lockerbie neighborhood in downtown Indianapolis.

Dan Wakefield

This photo was included as part of a great story by former NUVO editor and Indianapolis Star writer Will Higgins about the return to Indianapolis of another great Hoosier-born writer, Dan Wakefield. Wakefield, who wrote the best sellers Going All The Way and Starting Over (both made into feature films), returned to Indianapolis to write a biography of his friend, Kurt Vonnegut.

Vonnegut, often compared to Mark Twain, is considered by many to be among the greatest American writers. His novels include Slaughter-House Five, Cat’s Cradle and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, among others.

As a writer and human, Vonnegut was often at odds with conventional wisdom.

He called out the year 1492 in his novel Breakfast of Champions.  “As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.”

Photo courtesy Indianapolis Star, Frank Espich, photographer. Thanks to cousin Adam Newton for tipping me on the mural.