"The Gentleman from Indianapolis"
Kurt Vonnegut, 1922–2007

GREGORY SUMNER

Henry David Thoreau said, "I have traveled extensively in Concord.".... [W]hat he said about Concord is what every child feels, what every child seemingly must feel, about the place where he or she was born. There is surely more than enough to marvel at for a lifetime, no matter where the child is born. Castles? Indianapolis was full of them.
In his 1981 "autobiographical collage," Palm Sunday, Kurt Vonnegut recounted the frustration he experienced trying to convince the Indianapolis Star to run an obituary for another city-native-made-good, Janet Flanner. For decades, Flanner had been Paris correspondent for The New Yorker, and, like Vonnegut, she was a member of the prestigious American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In Vonnegut's estimation, Flanner was "the most deft and charming literary stylist Indianapolis has so far produced, and the one who came closest to being a planetary citizen, too." Despite these achievements, no one he spoke to over the phone at the Star's city room had ever heard of her. Vonnegut was able at last to overcome their disinterest when he mentioned that she was related to the family who ran a prominent chain of local funeral homes. From this he concluded that his "legacy," too, was secure—that, when the time came, he would have no problem getting an appropriate obituary in an Indianapolis paper, "because I am related to people who used to own a chain of hardware stores."1	1
Kurt Vonnegut, c. 1984 Courtesy Butler University
The cultural provincialism Kurt Vonnegut decried and often parodied still exists in Indianapolis, but, judging from how the city responded to his death this past April, he need not have worried that his life and career would be reduced to his connections to the (still fondly remembered) Vonnegut Hardware chain. The city had already embarked in 2007 on "The Year of Kurt Vonnegut," an ambitious program of community activities and events honoring his "Indianapolis heritage and literary contributions to the world." Among the highlights were mayoral proclamations, a "one city-one book" library promotion of his 1969 antiwar masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five, exhibitions of his silkscreens (a passion in his later years), and a McFadden Lecture at Butler University, which took place, as it turned out, two weeks after his death. Mark Vonnegut delivered his father's last speech to a packed audience at Clowes Hall on April 27. The next day, fellow Indianapolis literary alum Dan Wakefield, speaking at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, offered an emotional testament to the generosity of his friend and mentor. The memorial lovefest was sincere and widespread, and represented the last phase of a rapprochement of sorts between Kurt Vonnegut and his native city which had been in the works for some time.	. . .