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I am not really. I am not real. I am a construct of my imagination. I am a fiction of my brain.
I know. I know. I'm late to THE KICKSTARTER LETTERS party. It was a time-sensitive project intimately tied to the release of author David David Katzman's novel A GREATER MONSTER. So basically, the party happened last year, but I'm walking into it 15 months later, hoping to ride the residual momentum of a memorable event. It's such an internet age thing to release a book as memorabilia for another book. Literature to celebrate the passing of the moment, instead of immortality. It's the kind of thing that interests me. So, I decided to give THE KICKSTARTER LETTERS a go anyway, because I could and I wanted to give that new Kindle paperwhite of mine a first ride. How does this object of ephemera hold up to destructive embrace of father time? Not so bad, there might be a little piece of immortality in THE KICKSTARTER LETTERS, but not a major one.
As its name imply, THE KICKSTARTER LETTERS was born a perk for a Kickstarter campaign destined to fund David David Katzman's second novel A GREATER MONSTER. The concept is simple and amusing. David David Katzman wrote a handwritten letter or stream-of-consciousness email to 52 of the backers of A GREATER MONSTER's fundaing campaign (which was a great success, by the way). The short messages (a couple hundred words each) are inspired by the backer's name or a suggestion they have made, depending on the amount of money they paid. It's a lot of stream-of-consciousness fiction written about people you will probably never know (I don't think Katzman knew them all himself), but it's a fun little creative exercise nonetheless.
If you're a creative person, there is a good chance you're going to enjoy THE KICKSTARTER LETTERS. There is a beautiful folly to taking a person's name, even better a total stranger, deconstructing it and making a story up. It's something I would do with other creative types, around a cold one. The stories of THE KICKSTARTER LETTERS don't go anywhere, but it's not the purpose. Their creation from a name, their inception from nothingness is more interesting than their actual narrative content. It's more or less the same thing over and over again, but if you're a slow reader, you should enjoy the short bursts of narrative alchemy. It loses its meaning if you read more than 10 stories at the time, but I'm telling you right now, don't do it. THE KICKSTARTER LETTERS is best enjoyed parsimoniously, like hot peppers.
So has this idiosyncratic, time-sensitive project survived its showdown to father time? Yes, but it took a part of its meaning. THE KICKSTARTER LETTERS was probably best enjoyed from its announcement to its delivery. It's a bunch of letters, containing stories that go in every directions, written to people you don't know. There is a certain group of readers that will hate this. That would be the kind of reader who would only read the story about their name and let the rest of THE KICKSTARTER LETTERS go unread. It's such a peculiar, fun exercise that it survives as such, despite its timely nature. I'm already writing my own letters in my mind, whether I see a peculiar name written in the media. I'm not sure if the immortality of THE KICKSTARTER LETTERS has eluded David David Katzman or not, but it hasn't eluded me. It will never change the landscape of literature, but it'll survive time as an unwitting tool to trigger the creativity of those who were strangers to his project.