So long, Kurt...

Just a note to mark the passing of Kurt Vonnegut, a real icon among American writers, as well as a world-class curmudgeon. He'll be sadly missed, but his work will live on.

I was always kind of fascinated by the notion of his Kilgore Trout character, whom I always understood as being one of the greatest writers in the world, but ironically only able to get published as filler material for "dirty magazines." It kind of ties in with a recent editorial from Lenswork magazine, in which Brooks Jensen discusses how for something to be recognized by posterity as a great work, it has to survive long enough to earn the honor, and in order to do that, it has to gain some degree of popularity and recognition among contemporaries. Think about the hundred of thousands (millions?) of books written over the years, the vast majority of which sold a handful of copies. Physical copies may still exist, but if the book wasn't appreciated when it was released, the odds of it being rediscovered and hailed as a timeless work of art at some later date are just too small to calculate. Recognition ends up as the difference between being Kilgore Trout and Kurt Vonnegut.

So, I guess this means I better get busy, eh?