Kurt_Vonnegut_1972Chris Meadows wrote our delightful post on Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and e-books. But as a decades-long Vonnegut fan, I myself will offer a related correction. He was not, not, not a lifelong resident of Indianapolis.

Although distracted by TeleRead’s move to a new site—still going on—I should have noticed and fixed the error as soon as I saw Chris’s post.

Vonnegut’s novels often reflected where he wrote or researched them, often through real-life experiences. Slaughterhouse-Five, perhaps his most famous work, is about the American firebombing of Dresden, where Vonnegut was a prisoner of war. Player Piano, Vonnegut’s prescient warning against unfettered automation, was set in the fictitious factory town of Ilium. It was not Schenectady but in many ways it might as well have been; that’s where Vonnegut worked in public relations for General Electric. Speaking of Vonnegut, you can now enjoy at least some of his writings for free as a member of Kindle Unlimited.

Meanwhile my thanks to Hap, sideburnsmephisto, and Shane Phipp, who wrote: “Vonnegut was not a lifelong resident of Indianapolis, as much as we here in Indy would like to claim him. He lived most of his later years in New York City and before that he lived on Cape Cod. He did return to his hometown often and spent a lot of time visiting his friends here.”

Now—the positive, about our bad. Here’s more evidence of the endless value that community members add to the TeleRead site through their comments, the reason our new incarnation will have a community page devoted just to comments, which will also still appear with individual posts. We’ve asked TeleRead readers to refrain from comments during our transition to the new site (please, please do), and I can’t guarantee that the Vonnegut-related ones will make it, but with this post, we’ll set the record straight in a different way.

Think we’re messed up any fact? We want to hear from you! Our goal isn’t to pass ourselves off as infallible, but rather to get at the truth.

Related: The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library. Yes, it’s in Indianapolis, where Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922.

Photo information: Here.

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