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Eleven Karens: A Novel
Not since Flaubert's L'éducation sentimentale has a novel so vividly described man's helplessness in the face of woman. In this tale of sexual education, the narrator recounts his experiences with eleven fascinating women -- all of whom happen to be named Karen. In an attempt to explain this statistical anomaly, he takes us on a journey that begins in the fifth grade when he is the groom at his own shotgun wedding. He survives this ritual sacrifice to go on to his other a high school cheerleader who teaches him how to run the bases, a young disciple of Margaret Mead whom he meets playing volleyball in a nudist camp in Pennsylvania, a lovely Italian woman with Monica Vitti eyes who steals his heart on the Via Appia Antica in Rome, a statuesque African capitalist who literally takes the shirt off his back in Togo, a sexually confused waitress who appropriates his sperm in Quebec, and a boozy southern actress in L.A. who can't decide whether she is Vivien Leigh or Joan Collins. From each of his Karens he learns about women and life. And as he gets older, though not necessarily wiser, he marches on intrepidly to confront the next Karen who inexorably crosses his path. Eleven Karens is both a coming-of-age story and a touching homage to women -- a funny and tender tale told in the delightfully cracked voice of one of the most unusual comic novelists writing today.
- GenresFiction
240 pages, Hardcover
First published December 24, 2002
3 people are currently reading
29 people want to read
About the author
Peter Lefcourt
20 books31 followersPeter Lefcourt is a refugee from the trenches of Hollywood, where he has distinguished himself as a writer and producer of film and television. Among his credits are "Cagney and Lacey," for which he won an Emmy Award; "Monte Carlo," in which he managed to keep Joan Collins in the same wardrobe for 35 pages; the relentlessly sentimental "Danielle Steel's Fine Things," and the underrated and hurried "The Women of Windsor," the most sordid, and thankfully last, miniseries about the British Royal Family.
He began writing novels in the late 1980's, after being declared "marginally unemployable" in the entertainment business by his then agent. In 1991 Lefcourt published The Deal -- an act of supreme hubris that effectively bit the hand that fed him and produced, in that inverse and masochistic logic of Hollywood, a fresh demand for his screenwriting services. It remains a cult favorite in Hollywood, was one of the ten books that John Gotti reportedly ordered from jail, and was adapted into a movie -- starring William H. Macy, Meg Ryan and L.L. Cool Jay -- that premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
Subsequently, he has divided his time between screenplays and novels, publishing The Dreyfus Affair in 1992, his darkly comic look at homophobia in baseball as a historical analog to anti-Semitism in fin de siecle France, which The Walt Disney Company has optioned twice and let lapse twice in fits of anxiety about what it says about the national pastime and, by extension, Disneyland. He is hopeful that a major(or even minor) motion picture will be made from it in his lifetime. The book continues to sell well in trade paperback -- it's in its fifteenth printing, and, as such, acts as a small but steady cottage industry for its author, who, at this point, would almost rather keep optioning it than have it actually made. But not really.
In 1994, he published Di And I, a heavily fictionalized version of his love affair with the late Princess of Wales. Princess Diana's own stepgodmother, Barbara Cartland, who was herself no slouch when it came to publishing torrid books, declared Di And I "ghastly and unnecessary," which pushed the British edition briefly onto the best-seller lists. Di And I was optioned by Fine Line Pictures, in 1996, and was quietly abandoned after Diana's untimely death the following year. Someday it may reach the screen -- when poor Diana is no longer seen as an historical icon but merely as the misunderstood and tragic figure that she was, devoured by her own popularity.
Abbreviating Ernie, his next novel, was inspired by his brief brush with notoriety after the appearance of Di And I. At the time he was harassed by the British tabloids and spent seven excruciating minutes on "Entertainment Tonight." He was subsequently and fittingly bumped out of People Magazine by O.J. Simpson's white Bronco media event of June, 1994. In a paroxysm of misplaced guilt, the editors of "People," to make amends, declared it a "Beach Read," which helped put the book ephemerally on the Best Seller lists during the summer of 1994. Anecdotally, however, the author spent a lot of time combing the beaches that summer without seeing a single person reading his book.
Lefcourt's research on a movie for HBO about the 1995 Bob Packwood canard was the germ for his next novel, The Woody. He began to see that the former senator's battle with the Senate Ethics Committee was a dramatization of the total confusion in America regarding appropriate sexual behavior for politicians. Packwood became the sacrificial lamb -- taking the pipe for an entire generation of men. Basically, he got his dick caught in the zeitgeist. After President Clinton got his caught in a younger zeitgeist, nearly costing him his job, The Woody became all the more topical. It asks the question: What is the relationship between a politician's sexual competence and his popularity in the polls? If Packwood had been as smooth as Clinton, he would be the majority lead
He began writing novels in the late 1980's, after being declared "marginally unemployable" in the entertainment business by his then agent. In 1991 Lefcourt published The Deal -- an act of supreme hubris that effectively bit the hand that fed him and produced, in that inverse and masochistic logic of Hollywood, a fresh demand for his screenwriting services. It remains a cult favorite in Hollywood, was one of the ten books that John Gotti reportedly ordered from jail, and was adapted into a movie -- starring William H. Macy, Meg Ryan and L.L. Cool Jay -- that premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
Subsequently, he has divided his time between screenplays and novels, publishing The Dreyfus Affair in 1992, his darkly comic look at homophobia in baseball as a historical analog to anti-Semitism in fin de siecle France, which The Walt Disney Company has optioned twice and let lapse twice in fits of anxiety about what it says about the national pastime and, by extension, Disneyland. He is hopeful that a major(or even minor) motion picture will be made from it in his lifetime. The book continues to sell well in trade paperback -- it's in its fifteenth printing, and, as such, acts as a small but steady cottage industry for its author, who, at this point, would almost rather keep optioning it than have it actually made. But not really.
In 1994, he published Di And I, a heavily fictionalized version of his love affair with the late Princess of Wales. Princess Diana's own stepgodmother, Barbara Cartland, who was herself no slouch when it came to publishing torrid books, declared Di And I "ghastly and unnecessary," which pushed the British edition briefly onto the best-seller lists. Di And I was optioned by Fine Line Pictures, in 1996, and was quietly abandoned after Diana's untimely death the following year. Someday it may reach the screen -- when poor Diana is no longer seen as an historical icon but merely as the misunderstood and tragic figure that she was, devoured by her own popularity.
Abbreviating Ernie, his next novel, was inspired by his brief brush with notoriety after the appearance of Di And I. At the time he was harassed by the British tabloids and spent seven excruciating minutes on "Entertainment Tonight." He was subsequently and fittingly bumped out of People Magazine by O.J. Simpson's white Bronco media event of June, 1994. In a paroxysm of misplaced guilt, the editors of "People," to make amends, declared it a "Beach Read," which helped put the book ephemerally on the Best Seller lists during the summer of 1994. Anecdotally, however, the author spent a lot of time combing the beaches that summer without seeing a single person reading his book.
Lefcourt's research on a movie for HBO about the 1995 Bob Packwood canard was the germ for his next novel, The Woody. He began to see that the former senator's battle with the Senate Ethics Committee was a dramatization of the total confusion in America regarding appropriate sexual behavior for politicians. Packwood became the sacrificial lamb -- taking the pipe for an entire generation of men. Basically, he got his dick caught in the zeitgeist. After President Clinton got his caught in a younger zeitgeist, nearly costing him his job, The Woody became all the more topical. It asks the question: What is the relationship between a politician's sexual competence and his popularity in the polls? If Packwood had been as smooth as Clinton, he would be the majority lead
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 21, 2010
Subtitle should be My Sexual Exploits, Let Me Show You Them. I’m no prude, but this really felt like an unnecessary sexual diversion that I still don’t quite know why I finished. I ordered the book because I heard it had similarities to An Abundance of Katherines - outside of the protagonist having multiple relationships with women of the same name, there’s no comparison at all. I’m still kind of angry I spent as much time on this book as I did.
October 23, 2017
I figured this would be fluff reading, which it was, but I was also promised comedy, which it wasn't.
Eleven Karens follows the sexual exploits of a guy who ended up sleeping with eleven women named karen. If this sounds like a boring plot, you're correct. There isn't really an overarching plot besides this. There's a vague timeline that kicks our narrator from city to city, job to job, Karen to Karen, but the story is literally just a series of meetings and seductions and consummations. This is fine and good, but there's nothing really noteworthy about these encounters. The more interesting women are played for comedy, the briefer affairs tend to be caricatures to be condescended to, and even the rare moment where there's something erotic occurring, the conceit of the comic story tamps it down. As such, it doesn't work as comedy because the humor is of a tired playboy vein, while it also doesn't work as any sort of titillation because, like most self-styled casanovas, everything stops right before it gets good. In the end it feels more like a big game hunt catalog than any record of passion or joy, despite the liner notes suggesting that this is a poignant tribute to women the narrator loved.
Eleven Karens follows the sexual exploits of a guy who ended up sleeping with eleven women named karen. If this sounds like a boring plot, you're correct. There isn't really an overarching plot besides this. There's a vague timeline that kicks our narrator from city to city, job to job, Karen to Karen, but the story is literally just a series of meetings and seductions and consummations. This is fine and good, but there's nothing really noteworthy about these encounters. The more interesting women are played for comedy, the briefer affairs tend to be caricatures to be condescended to, and even the rare moment where there's something erotic occurring, the conceit of the comic story tamps it down. As such, it doesn't work as comedy because the humor is of a tired playboy vein, while it also doesn't work as any sort of titillation because, like most self-styled casanovas, everything stops right before it gets good. In the end it feels more like a big game hunt catalog than any record of passion or joy, despite the liner notes suggesting that this is a poignant tribute to women the narrator loved.
October 21, 2008
I was loaned this book by my mother - Karen. I really enjoyed it. It's a quick read, essentially 11 very short stories, but quite entertaining.
My least favorite part of the book? The author photo. Please, Mr. Lefcourt, call a photographer... stat!
My least favorite part of the book? The author photo. Please, Mr. Lefcourt, call a photographer... stat!
October 12, 2022
An easy enough read. I agree with the person below who explains this book at a collection of short stories. It’s amazing to me what privilege looks like. Each of us lives many different versions of our life, but it takes a certain kind of money and affluence to live this many lives.
September 5, 2007
Decent, amusing fluff. You can read it in a day.
Want to read
June 23, 2009Karen at work picked this up. She will be passing it on to me.
December 14, 2012
Pretty obvious why I got this book! And also obvious why the library was getting rid of it. Pretty average book about all the loves in this guy’s life who were called Karen.
August 7, 2023
I really enjoyed this book. It took NO time to read and was very funny. Only 11 chapters long (one for each Karen) it will fly by!
Read
January 20, 2016This was a very weird, unusual book. I never really connected with the subject matter, even though my name is Karen!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews