Orson Scott Card has No Closets

Mormonoclast writer Orson Scott Card built a new home in the foothills of Draper with explicit instructions to his builders to ensure there were no closets whatsoever in the house, no sir, not one.

“I mean, why would I want a closet, or need a closet? I think far too much attention is given to closets and that which is held within the closet, so I don’t want a closet, I don’t need a closet, I can’t stand the closet,” said the firebrand author of the Ender’s Game series.

An anxious Card looked around, then pointed toward recently-completed, parallel Formica countertops and said, “I’m going to drop the ‘A’ off these buggers, if you know what I mean. You know what I mean, right? I’m Orson Scott Card.”

The new home is conservative in appearance, and with no closets it provides the Southern Virginia professor a chance to spatially use his creativity to see what he can cram into what outsiders might see as a normal home, but is in fact missing vital components upon closer inspection.

Trey Stone, building the home for Card, said, “I’m worried that Mr. Orson Card isn’t aware of the consequences of having no closets. Sure, the majority of square feet in the home will be used as comfort rooms for him, but those small closets play a big role. I mean, how is he going to have a wardrobe? Surely the only way to dress nicely is by having a closet. Without the closets, is it even a home? It’s more like, I dunno, a Big It instead.”

The 1985 square-foot rambler honors the release year of his magnum opus Ender’s Game, which won both Hugo and Nebula awards for the author, and was just released theatrically. He plans to use the home as a respite from the plush, humid landscapes of North Carolina that he calls home.

“The dark secret of homeowning society—the one that dares not speak its name—is how many homeowners first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction of closets, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homeowners community and live normally,” Card said, followed by a series of heavy breaths.

“I’m being forced to comply with way too many zoning ordinances. I also see out-of-work urban men working on my home, which is weird since they clearly look like out-of-work urban men. I can’t say for certain that they are in Obama’s national police force, but I can’t say for certain that they aren’t in it, either. This is all really, really gay.”