Porter Shreve

I can't remember when news about a writer has ever been the New York Times' most e-mailed article, but Kurt Vonnegut's obituary had that distinction this past Thursday. And it's no wonder. He was an enormously popular, genre-breaking novelist whose work has never gone out of date or out of print. And he seems to have been a genuinely fine human being as well.

I've just returned from a day-long event in Indianapolis called the "Gathering of Writers" at the Writers' Center of Indiana, where the only bittersweet note (besides the weather: it's snowing on April 16 -- the cruelest month, indeed!) was the passing of the city's most celebrated writer. Vonnegut was born and raised in Indianapolis, and according to this article from the Indiana Historical Society he once said, "All my jokes are Indianapolis. All my attitudes are Indianapolis. My adenoids are Indianapolis. If I ever severed myself from Indianapolis, I would be out of business. What people like about me is Indianapolis."

Most cities might be wise to disassociate themselves from such a wonderfully gimlet eyed satirist, but Indianapolis has always claimed Vonnegut proudly, and in a sadly ironic twist, 2007 was to be the Year of Vonnegut. The city had chosen Slaughterhouse-Five for "One Book, One City," and the featured event was to be a talk by Vonnegut himself at Butler University on April 27. But now his son Mark will step in to read the lecture. In an article in Thursday's Indianapolis Star, Vonnegut's daughter Lily said that her father had been looking forward to the homecoming. “He was so excited to go. It’s really all he thought about for the last couple of months,” she said. “It will be a memorial now.”

For some wonderful NPR tributes, including a funny story John Irving tells involving Vonnegut and the Heimlich Maneuver, click here. And for Vonnegut's writing advice, click here.