Stephen King Digs Kindles and Hemingway in UR
The Amazon Product Placement Short Story Is A Gift for Kindle-Owners
Feb 14, 2009
Amazon Kindle owners could pre-order King's Kindle-exclusive short story, UR, for download on February 24th. Instead, the story appeared by surprise on February 12th, mirroring (to a small degree ) the surprises Wesley faces with his new Kindle
Review of UR by Stephen King
This is the Stephen King story of the moment. It has his humor, his creepiness, and his ability to set stories right now. The date is November 2009, perhaps an original release date,and Marley and Me as a conversational movie. Sarah Palin appears three times, but, humorously, only in one universe, the universe where Wesley Smith gets a pink Kindle 2 in Kentucy.
Wesley, of course, is the main character of UR. He is a gentle college professor at a school that is considered good because no one knows how bad it is; no one has bothered to measure its quality. He is also a frustrated writer, who has stories in him that do not make their way out of him, and he is in a relationship with a vivacious basketball coach. In an awkward bit of plotting - does an English professor need a reason to want a Kindle? - Wesley acquires a Kindle out of spite, and then discovers his Kindle is no ordinary Kindle. This Kindle is from another Amazon, and another Wesley is incurring the charges that UR's Wesley makes when he orders books no one else has read, such as King's fictional Hemingway story, "Cortland's Dogs". Wesley ultimately breaks the terms of agreement that are attached to his particular Kindle, and he faces consequences that only Stephen King can conjure.
How Stephen King Weaves the Kindle Into UR
Stephen King must be as mesmerized by the Kindle as any other new Kindle owner, because every detail of the device seems to fascinate him. Readers are walked through every part of Kindle 2, from the power switch and the digital Kindle manual to King's invented experimental features. King describes what every Kindle owner faces, including:
- the surprise of having the manual in the device and discovering tips and tricks
- the temptation of buying more books than one can afford (although that surely can not apply to King)
- the singular experience of discovering the familiarity of color has been replaced by a somehow-more-exciting grey scale
- the lure of experimental features
- debating if Kindle books are real books
- trying to describe the fascination of using a Kindle to someone who doesn't have one.
When Wesley returns to class after a weekend of reading on the magical Kindle (and all Kindles are magical, no matter what universe their delivery comes from), he starts talking about the Hemingway story he alone has read, and "he realized he was telling the class that Papa had never written a great story about dogs, but if he ha lived, he surely would have."
Readers of UR experience Wesley's difficulties in trying to share Cortland's Dogs, because every Stephen King fan will want to read UR, but only the Kindle readers are currently able to access the story. When UR is quoted, it is just as when King recreates Hemingway for Wesley ("A man's life is five dogs long, Cortland believed."). When a Kindle King fan reads some of UR to a paperback King fan, the response will be, "It sounds like King, but I've never heard of the story."
UR was published February 12, 2009 by Storyville, LLC. It is 182 KB. It is only available in Amazon Kindle format, and the ASIN is B001RF3U9K.
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