(API) Model, TV personality, fashion maven and philanthropist Kim Kardashian will soon add another role: author. Along with William Shakespeare, Herman Melville, Pliny the Elder and Ernest Hemingway, Kardashian will enter the ranks of the literary canon after signing a $3.5 million dollar deal with Harper Collins to publish a book of her wit and wisdom on Twitter.
The book, whose working title is “Kim: What A Tweet!” is slated to hit bookshelves next spring and will comprise the best of the “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” star’s sage observations, epigrammatic putdowns, style tips and other eructations.
“Wait til u C my c-thru @Dorkboy.” “Party at Eva’s … @NightStalk bit.ly/tja78.” “Kisses @Robiespierre.”
“This is literature in the 2010s,” said HarperCollins associate editor Precious Denbow. “Kim sits on a perch surveying the world through the lens of an artist. A true visionary listens to her own muse, and you can tell it’s true with Kim, who barely seems to know the rest of us are here.”
“U Turn Mee On @Chinese Noodles Mee pictwitter.com/hlwff,” writes the Armenian bombshell in Chapter 8, titled, “Kim Eats.” “Vintage XOXO RT @PrinceAlbertJacket,” she adds in Chapter 9, “Kim Puts On Clothes.”
Though the book is not yet in galley form, Amy Ritter of the online magazine Salon has been following Kardashian’s Twitter account for the better part of two years. Ritter’s relentless tracing of Kardashian’s “post-omniscient voice” has left her with dark circles under her eyes, a hunched back and teacher arm, but she said it has been worth the degradation of her looks in her late ’20s to remain glued to Kardashian’s every movement, stutter and peristaltic constriction.
“Kim’s got a lot to say. Whether it’s ‘OMG, I love this song.’ To ‘OMG, Faux Fur Friday!’ My generation has become obsessed with her picaresque journey through post racial, post body conscious America. As “The Wasteland” belonged to the Lost Generation and Woodstock to the hippies, Kim belongs to us. She is proud of her body. Proud of her curves. Proud of her explicit sex tape. My feeling is that she’s probably not so proud of her spelling.”
“But hey,” Ritter adds. “This is Kim’s world. We just live in it.”
Critic Harold Bloom says that mainstream publishing has been in a rut, and that Kardashian’s book should have America talking again about the simple joys of declarative sentences, “if that’s what they are.” Deceptively simple, they can in fact be likened to Aristotlian syllogisms, he said, with both major and minor premises forming categorical propositions. “LOL,” he added.
Meanwhile, linguist Noam Chomsky says that Kardashian’s Tweets do follow some logic of innate universal grammar “which is why readers seem to understand them,” he says.
“I ❤ ombre sequins RT @Butterface,” Kardashian wrote Friday morning. “Lashes,” she wrote later, which Bloom says is apparently about eyelashes. “It is plainly in the indicative mood!” he says.
“You underestimate her at her peril,” says Bloom. “If you don’t believe me, maybe her seven figure deal with Harper Collins will shut you up. Bullshit, as they say, walks.”
“Gym ouch RT @FitnessFrance bit.ly/387FF,” Kim wrote in a tweet followed by a bunch of numbers that were likely garbled Hex code. “My nipslip @boo HuffPo instagram.com/72985.”
HarperCollins’ Denbow was asked if it might not be better to publish more books by up and coming authors, betting on 10 fresh talents for a potential breakthrough to compete with the thriving indie book world, rather than offering millions to an untested celebrity author. She laughed out loud.
“What are you, a nun?” she asked.
“Khloe’s rock! Shine! twitpic.com/8whif,” wrote Kim at lunch. “Humphries bad. @BruceJenner.”
Professor Roy Danbury of the University of Connecticut says that Kardashian offers the world a mix of compelling post-structuralist solipsism paired with the promise of playful tit and ass pictures that have captured the zeitgeist of the times: “We stare because we cannot help it,” he says. “Her teasing Tweets are like neurotoxins, paralyzing us into torpid, numb stupidity as she looks over her shoulder upon her own ass with the gimlet-eyed stare of Callipygian Venus, marble faced with amazement, indifferent to the pain she causes. Why waste time with a guy like Shakespeare talking around the issue?”
Danbury added that he’s written six historical novels about post-Commune France, but as of right now cannot find a publisher. He often contemplates suicide.
“Tickle @Kanye,” Kim tweeted.
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