Chris Kraus

When Chris Kraus, an unsuccessful artist pushing 40, spends an evening with a rogue academic named Dick, she falls madly and inexplicably in love, enlisting her husband in her haunted pursuit. Dick proposes a kind of game between them, but when he fails to answer their letters Chris continues alone, transforming an adolescent infatuation into a new form of philosophy. Blurring the lines of fiction, essay and memoir, Chris Kraus's novel was a literary sensation when it was first published in 1997. Widely considered to be the most important feminist novel of the past two decades, I Love Dick is still essential reading; as relevant, fierce and funny as ever.

I Love Dick

In "I Love Dick", published in 1997, Chris Kraus, author of Aliens & Anorexia, Torpor, and Video Green, boldly tore away the veil that separates fiction from reality and privacy from self-expression. It's no wonder that I Love Dick instantly elicited violent controversies and attracted a host of passionate admirers. I Love Dick is a manifesto for a new kind of feminist who isn't afraid to burn through her own narcissism in order to assume responsibility for herself and for all the injustice in world - and it's a book you won't put down until the author's final, heroic acts of self-revelation and transformation.

Finally sitting with the elapsed pages of this ; a lot to consider. Many a reader will balk at the non-consensual inclusion of Dick into this woman’s flights of fancy, that it isn’t ethical, that invoking “fiction” is flimsy protectiveness and elusion of accountability. That line of tut-tutting very much did inform the basis of the majority of its initial criticism. Chris rightfully deigns Dick a symbol and a format (as she once said: “he’s the Wizard of Oz”). Art is not under an obligation to be made in perfect agreeability of its muses, it has always been celebrated and reviewed on the basis of things like “impact” and “inventiveness”. Women muses have spent centuries perishing in anonymity and disgrace. In a work that hangs on to Dick only for a cheeky title, years were wasted in dismissal over the alleged muse’s privacy. Is it doing too much? Is it too weird? Too intense? Yes, sure, it is a number of “too’s”, and it is more than its salacious title and premise and Amazon Prime adaptation. The bulk of the work is witness to Klaus’s preternatural ability to weave together meditations on schizophrenia, queerness, anorexia, art criticism, film, all with startling and personal acuity. She produces a prolific volume of articulate interrelated thought-webs that feel like a hypertext than chronological account, like life and its contradictions and its blurrily recalled details could be ensnared in 250 pages. This is serious work, and the world has taken its time in coming around to recognise that.

pranya


Finally sitting with the elapsed pages of this ; a lot to consider. Many a reader will balk at the non-consensual inclusion of Dick into this woman’s flights of fancy, that it isn’t ethical, that invoking “fiction” is flimsy protectiveness and elusion of accountability. That line of tut-tutting very much did inform the basis of the majority of its initial criticism. Chris rightfully deigns Dick a symbol and a format (as she once said: “he’s the Wizard of Oz”). Art is not under an obligation to be made in perfect agreeability of its muses, it has always been celebrated and reviewed on the basis of things like “impact” and “inventiveness”. Women muses have spent centuries perishing in anonymity and disgrace. In a work that hangs on to Dick only for a cheeky title, years were wasted in dismissal over the alleged muse’s privacy. Is it doing too much? Is it too weird? Too intense? Yes, sure, it is a number of “too’s”, and it is more than its salacious title and premise and Amazon Prime adaptation. The bulk of the work is witness to Klaus’s preternatural ability to weave together meditations on schizophrenia, queerness, anorexia, art criticism, film, all with startling and personal acuity. She produces a prolific volume of articulate interrelated thought-webs that feel like a hypertext than chronological account, like life and its contradictions and its blurrily recalled details could be ensnared in 250 pages. This is serious work, and the world has taken its time in coming around to recognise that.

heleen de boever

A bit of a masturbatory, postmodern academic fuckfest, but strewn throughout with poignant references and intelligent observations nonetheless (especially in relation to the position of the female-as-artist). Must revisit.

I love Dick

Nina Ding

Eleanor Luhar

I wanted to like this, or at the very least appreciate its artistic merit and/or feminist narrative. But I just didn't.
Like some other readers I've seen, I don't quite understand why this is seen as so radically feminist. A woman - Chris - and her husband become rather obsessed with a man named Dick after one ordinary evening together. He does nothing to warrant this attention, and actually expresses his discomfort over it. But the obsession continues and escalates, and I myself felt rather uncomfortable reading it.
I do appreciate that part of the 'novelty' or art of this book is the way in which it blurs the lines between reality and fiction; how much of this story is true? How much is fictitious? There's no way of really knowing, and that is (I assume) supposed to be the point. It's supposed to intrigue us. But I didn't feel the necessity for the level of obsession and sexual attention around Dick, and I really didn't understand *why*. Overall, I guess I have to just say *I did not get this book*. Clearly, there are many other readers who enjoyed or appreciated it far more than I did, and that's fair enough. But it just was not for me, sadly. 2 stars.

Frederik Van den Bril

After 100 pages I called it quits. The start was funny and original enough - Chris “a 39-year-old experimental filmmaker” and Sylvère “a 56-year old college professor from New York” pay a visit to Dick “an English cultural critic”. After spending the night at Dick’s place, the couple becomes completely and dangerously obsessed with him and in turn start writing him ever-longer, unsend letters. Good setup, could have been very good satire. However very soon the book becomes tedious and tiresome. Especially the intellectual name-dropping and the in-crowd in-jokes bothered me. Even worse, the whole “novel” is build on this. In the afterword Joan Hawkins says: “In Kraus’ novels, Baudrillard and Deleuze and meditations on Kierkegaardian Third Remove form an intrinsic part of the narrative… ” Yeah, no thanks. All the persons in this book actually exist and the book is autobiographical. So the whole book feels like somewhere in between academic gossip and weird real-life performance art. At this point I feel like the author used the intellectual circle-jerking to cover up the absence of an actual decent narrative. Also, explain to me why this is a feminist book? Because the woman in the book is smart, because she gets critical theory and literary references? Surely feminism deserves better than that. I, for one, do not love Dick.

Clara Olausson

Marie

Alvaro

mic shulman

lucinda ventimiglia

Kathy Luo

MacKenzie Hamon

Charlotte Dann

Zoe Stricker

Ana Hein

Emelie

The cult feminist novel, now an Amazon Prime Video series starring Kevin Bacon

Alex Roland

When Chris Kraus, an unsuccessful artist pushing 40, spends an evening with a rogue academic named Dick, she falls madly and inexplicably in love, enlisting her husband in her haunted pursuit. Dick proposes a kind of game between them, but when he fails to answer their letters Chris continues alone, transforming an adolescent infatuation into a new form of philosophy. Blurring the lines of fiction, essay and memoir, Chris Kraus's novel was a literary sensation when it was first published in 1997. Widely considered to be the most important feminist novel of the past two decades, I Love Dick is still essential reading; as relevant, fierce and funny as ever.The novel's cult following has ensured a steady undercurrent of buzz since its first publication twenty years ago, with high-profile champions as diverse as Lena Dunham, Sheila Heti, Kim Gordon, Leslie Jamison and Alexa Chung

I Love Dick

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