Literati rejoice! After previously experimenting in the
written word through their various memoirs, Kim, Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian
have picked November 1st as the release date for their debut novel, Dollhouse.
What can we expect? A Picaresque satire? Existential fiction in the style of
Sartre? No matter what genre the novel winds up being, we can safely say that
it will change the face of literature as we know it. And here are five reasons why:
5. The plot will fascinate you
In a recent interview Khloe described the novel as "a narrative following a teenage runaway referred to only as "the kid", with the bulk of the text devoted to his experiences with the Glanton gang, a historical group of scalp hunters who massacred Indians and others in the United States-Mexico Borderlands in 1849 and 1850." Oops, that was Wikipedia's description of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, whose prose we always confuse with that of E! celebrities. The plot is actually based loosely on the girl's lives, so if you don't have time to read the book you could always watch a few episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians and get the gist of the plot.
4. The books name was picked by a fan
Always mindful of the common man and woman, the Kardashians took to their fans to find a name for their future classic. And none other than one Courtney Powell delivered with the devastatingly beautiful and simplistic Dollhouse. Is it an allegory for the seemingly perfect while actually plastic and hollow lifestyle that the Kardashians live? Sure, why not! More authors need to turn to their audience to make their book titles easier to understand. Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close could have been the much more descriptive and vivid as The 9/11 Book while Jonathan Frazen's Freedom would have been the more accurate White Liberal Guilt.
3. The Kardashians wrote the book together
There are no more acclaimed trio of literary sisters than Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, writers of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and whatever Anne Brontë wrote respectively. And yet Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney have managed to soar past the Brontë's accomplishments in their debut novel by choosing to write collaboratively. What artistry! Did they trade chapters? Paragraphs? Sentence fragments? The secrets of the Kardashian verve may never be known.
2. They are following a proud tradition of women writers
Joyce Carol Oates. Annie Proulx, Jennifer Egan. All names of people you have never heard of but we assure you they are all women and they are all writers. The Kardashians are destined to reach these levels of excellency if not exceed it when they put pen to paper. We expect shades of Miss Jane Austen's comedies of manners in the Kardashians' prose. Is Lamar Odom our generation's Mr. Darcy? Does that make Bruce Jenner a suitable Mr. Bennet? Have we read any of Jane Austen's novels other than Pride and Prejudice? That's two yeses and a mind your own damn business, we skimmed through Emma!
1. Real books are long, asshole!
Will Dollhouse be an embarrassment to literature? Probably, but what else were you going to read? Infinite Jest? Get real. Infinite Jest is nearly 1100 pages long, incredibly verbose and has footnotes in it. Footnotes. Nobody reads Infinite Jest. There are people who wrote their Master's thesis on David Foster Wallace who didn't read it. (We've read it, of course. Oh, what's it about? Well it's very hard to put into words...) Dollhouse is going to be a slender 336 pages, likely bulked up with big text. So preorder it off Amazon, you know you want to. If anybody asks just say you're reading the new John Updike. They'll be too busy trying to remember if he's alive to call your bluff.
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