I Love Dick

by Chris Kraus

Book Overview

A self-described failed filmmaker falls obsessively in love with her theorist-husband's colleague: a manifesto for a new kind of feminism and the power of first-person narration.

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1584350342
• ISBN13: 9781584350347
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: Semiotext(e)
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

WOW

Okay, it's not a perfect book. It's scary and self-indulgent and could have been trimmed. Yet ... it sticks with me like few things I've read this year. I heard it set off a firestorm n the art world, and I can see why. It's rare to see female anger come out so real, so raw. I bet most men hate this book. There's a party scene in this book that is the most honest thing I've ever read about female humiliation -- always being the "plus one" of some guy, or ignored for the prettier girls.I think it's a little too real and that scares people (men and women alike).

I Love Dick Embraces Failure With Style

This intriguingly titled volume is authored by Chris Kraus, a New Zealand-born alternative film-maker and teacher, now based in LA and New York. Married to Sylvere Lottringer, progenitor of the Semiotext(e) publishing house and cult intellectual, Kraus is concerned to prove that she has a fierce intellect of her own. Obviously a fan of experimentation, Kraus has produced a book which consists of a pastiche of letters, old art reviews, travelogues, essays and philosophical pronouncements. I Love Dick begins with a crush and develops into a full-scale reworking of the epistolary novel. Ostensibly, the narrative arises from Kraus' pursuit of her husband's academic colleague named Dick. With her husband's somewhat hesitant blessing, Kraus constructs this affair then views it as a text and attempts deconstruction. This story of manufactured desire also delivers a vivid portrait of Kraus' life to date. This involves intimate insights into her chequered past including descriptions of her Crohns disease and anorexia as well as providing glimpses of various sexual encounters, public humiliations and minor triumphs. In fact, much of the book is devoted to the project of reclaiming her past and making sense of it. She says she aims to 'avenge the ghost of her former self' by putting down the 'dirty, murky and complex' elements of her experience in writing. I Love Dick attempts the near impossible task of dealing with dumb infatuation in a brilliantly self-reflexive way. For Kraus, Dick is an object of affection, a sounding-board, a symptom of malaise and despite his indifference to her advances, a solution of sorts. As a way of explaining her process Kraus says:' When I met Dick I saw the two of us falling into the quintessential rock n' roll romance seduction, and I wanted us to play it out together as grown-ups. He didn't want to, but he also never said he didn't want to, so I took that as permission to play..' Her belief in a kind of Kierkegaardian performative philosophy makes her recognise situations and move with them, even if this involves a degree of manipulation and exaggeration. As the protagonist as well as the narrator of this drama, she has the remarkable ability to be passionate and analytical simulataneously. Even at the height of this 'amour fou', there is a detached, ironic quality to her eloquently rendered observations. Kraus' ability to actively involve her husband is this particular 'art project' is testament to her belief that hetrosexuality may be lived differently. She says: 'I wanted to figure out heterosexuality before turning 40 because I wouldn't get another chance.' Knowingly, she uses her charms to insert herself between two intellectual men - Sylvere & Dick - as a challenge to their academic composure. However, she soon realises that the admiration and respect that exists between Dick and Sylvere poses more of a threat to her own subjectivity than to their friendship. Apparently

This is a brilliant book.

This is a brilliant book. Like Proust, it is a narrative of the writer's sexual pursuit of a vacant love object, the pursuit of which is primarily to enable the writer to dwell on her emotions during the pursuit. Second, it is a commentary on the the connection between failure in the market-place and society's belief that such failure justifies debasement ("we hate your movie"). By making the hippest, most Marxist segment of society-- cutting edge academia and avant garde artists -- the upholders of market values is genius. Thrillingly, but incompletely, it seeks to indict society for diagnosing physical ugliness and economic failure as mental illness. Lastly, and of least interest, it seeks to establish a roster of unknown elites -- David Rattray, Alice Notley , Liza Martin , Ann Rover-- who will someday be the subject of intnese academic study by the Dicks of our children's generation. You'll hate Dick, but love Chris Kraus.w

read it and leave it!

I Love Dick is a terrific ride - order it, read it and pass it along to your best girl or guy friend, leave it on a train or plane or your doctor's office. This is a road story criss-crossing the terrain of academia, art, sex and love (and much , much more!) at 70 miles per hour.

better than _Titanic_

This is my favorite book of 1997. It deconstructs the romance narrative to which we are accustomed, and does so with great wit, intellectual acumen, and artistic vision. Kraus' book reads as a performance piece/treatise on love/feminist theory, as well as a (slightly screwy) novel._I Love Dick_ is intellectually and emotionally provocative. I highly reccomend this book to anyone interested in thinking rather than simply being passively 'entertained.' Oh, and the cover photo is a work of art, too.