chrissyastbury

My best friend George’s father is a writer for the Indianapolis Star and he writes the kind of articles that I enjoy most. A recent graduate of the Ernie Pyle School of Journalism, I don’t especially enjoy the parsed-down, strictly facts and no fun method of event coverage that intro journalism classes preach. Will Higgins’ writing has style, and I think it probably helps he doesn’t usually write about murders, trials, legislature, and the like.

Lately, it’s been breaking laws canoeing the canal, or tweeting coverage of the George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars concert in Broadripple: “Jager tastes like licorice.” Today, Mr. Higgins wrote about literary legend and Indy native, Dan Wakefield – and I’m envious.

My friend George and I consider ourselves ambassadors to the city we’ve grown up in (and our parents grew up in), and honestly, I can’t speak for George, but I’m almost uncomfortable with the recent outpouring of super positive attention the city has garnered following its super successful stint as SuperBowl host. Of course, I love the super recognition, but I’m not surprised. Indy has been overlooked for a long time and honestly, I think it’s part of its underdog appeal.

You have to be a kind of insider to get it. Like reading Dan Wakefield, or his good pal Kurt Vonnegut, and getting it. Sure, people outside of Indianapolis get Wakefield, as two of his novels have been made into Hollywood films (although he approves of only one), and Vonnegut is taught in schools everywhere. But I think when you’re from here, you have a heightened sense of getting it.

Even their books that aren’t based in Indianapolis or even about Indianapolis, you have a certain shared background: you know where they’re coming from, literally. Wakefield’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story “Going All the Way,” however, is based in Indianapolis and being able to identify and locate Sonny and Gunnar’s hangouts is an added treat.

Shortridge High School is Shortley. The Crown Hill Cemetery is Crown Point. Meridian Hills is Meridian Hills. The Melody Inn and the Red Key Taverns probably haven’t changed much at all since, and Binkley’s Kitchen & Bar on 52^nd & College is just Binkley’s Pharmacy, which it really was in the 1950′s when “Going All the Way” took place.

Sure, Wakefield and Vonnegut haven’t always painted Indianapolis in the most super of lights, but it’s really just proof of our underdog mentality. Our city isn’t perfect. What city is? And sure, they both left, as did David Letterman, Jane Pauley, John Wooden, etc., but that’s OK. Letterman wouldn’t be Letterman if he’d stayed.

Mr. Higgins’ article is actually about Wakefield’s recent return, at the age of 79, to work on a novel and a collection of Vonneguts’ letters to be published later this year.

“There’s so much Indianapolis” in the correspondence, Wakefield said, “that it just felt right to be here.”

I think the key to Mr. Higgins’ style is in his restrained delivery of the details. He doesn’t explain as much as present. He gets all the best details from his sources and lets them speak for themselves.

He walks past the electronic sculpture “Ann Dancing” practically every evening and is charmed by it. “It’s like a beacon lighting the way home,” he said.