Chapter 10 Summary and Analysis

Updike lectures in Indianapolis soon afterwards and asks Vonnegut what he should know about his hometown. Vonnegut no longer feels at home in this nice-enough city. The Class of 1940 holds its Fiftieth Reunion, but Vonnegut luckily gets Lyme disease and is able not to attend. He only gets sick when it is useful, like in 1942, when pneumonia keeps him from being a chemist, and the 1980s, when he nearly kills himself and he is confined to a locked ward for thirty days.

Vonnegut tells Updike that Indianapolis is the only human settlement whose location is determined by pen and straightedge; it is dead-center in the State of Indiana and laid out in a strict grid by Pierre Charles L'Enfant, architect of Washington, DC. Updike should consider it an infinitely expandable chessboard with a center circle. Vonnegut lists some famous citizens, including...