Indiana is known mostly for basketball, corn, the Autumn scenery in the
rolling hills of the southern part of the state, the billowing steel mills in the northwestern region, its seemingly unending railroad tracks and the Indy 500. Until recently reading H.L. Mencken on American Literature, I had associated the state with only a few authors of note, namely Lew Wallace, Kurt Vonnegut and perhaps the most identifiable with the state of Indiana, James Whitcomb Riley.