8/06/2013

So It Goes Over The Cliff

The Mary Sue reports that Amazon's Kindle Worlds, a program that licenses literary/media properties to produce (oxymoron alert!) "commercial fanfiction", has cut a deal for doing so with the estate handling the works of... Kurt Vonnegut.

Wait, what?  I double-checked the date to make sure it wasn't April 1st, and then the URL to make sure I hadn't ended up on The Onion's website.

Vonnegut had such a distinctive authorial voice, and style, and mindset, that I have trouble thinking that any Vonnegut-derived works for Kindle Worlds will be anything other than pastiche, rather than homage (or even passable imitation).

Vonnegut had such a distinctive authorial voice, and style, and mindset, that I have trouble envisoning a scene where someone in the Amazon Kindle Worlds offices would actually think the thought that, "Hey, let's license Kurt Vonnegut's work for the Kindle Worlds program!"

Vonnegut had such a distinctive authorial voice, and style, and mindset, that I have trouble envisioning anyone involved in handling his estate thinking the thought, "Hey, let's license Kurt's works to the Kindle Worlds program!  I'm sure Kurt would approve."

Well, actually Vonnegut might... not approve... but be phlegmatic about the idea.  Here's a quote of his:
"Go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

But you know what.  I'm not phlegmatic about the idea.  It just seems like a bad, sad joke.

Another Vonnegut quote, a bit more reflective of my reaction:
“Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.”


No comments: