Going All the Way

Publication of Going All the Way (New York, 1970) was of particular significance to Indianapolis. The novel’s author, Dan Wakefield, was born in the city in 1932 and grew up at 6131 Winthrop Avenue. He was a frequent user of the Broad Ripple Library, attended Public School 80 next door to the library, and graduated from Shortridge High School. Going All The Way, Wakefield’s first novel, came out of his Indianapolis experience and created something of a frisson in the city.

The novel explores the narrow-minded and confining attitudes in the Indianapolis of 1954 through the lives of two friends, Sonny Burns and Tom “Gunner” Casselman. Sonny is introverted and awkward and Gunner is the popular athlete, one of Shortridge’s (Shortley High in the book) “Big Rods.” Out of college and back from serving in the armed forces, they spend a summer in Indianapolis searching for more in life than just drinking and cruising for girls.

Life in Indianapolis is characterized as vacuous, marked by the self-contentment of a society convinced of its moral superiority. McCarthyism, Moral Rearmament, racism, and bigotry surround the two protagonists. In a memorable scene, a bearded Gunner is not allowed to swim in a country club swimming pool because he will “contaminate” it and “get the water dirty.” Some Indianapolis landmarks, such as Shortridge High School, the Herron School of Art, the Red Key Tavern, and the Riviera and Meridian Hills clubs, are featured in the book.

In Indianapolis, rumors persisted that the book satirized the author’s classmates and acquaintances. Wakefield denied this, but the subsequent ire and hostility toward him in the city kept the author away from Indianapolis in self-exile for 15 years.

Wakefield wrote about this reaction to Going All The Way in a subsequent memoir, Returning: A Spiritual Journey (1988), a work that marked the author’s reconciliation with the city. Despite the hometown reception, the novel quickly climbed the best-seller list and Kurt Vonnegut proclaimed it the “midwestern Catcher In The Rye.”

In 1997, a Mark Pellington-directed film starring Ben Affleck, Jeremy Davies, Amy Locane, Rose McGowan, and Rachel Weisz was shot on location at several recognizable sites in Indianapolis.