Synopses & Reviews
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.
The story is gripping enough: in 1994 a married, failed independent filmmaker, turning forty, falls in love with a well-known theorist and endeavors to seduce him with the help of her husband. But when the theorist refuses to answer her letters, the husband and wife continue the correspondence for each other instead, imagining the fling the wife wishes to have with Dick. What follows is a breathless pursuit that takes the woman across America and away from her husband and far beyond her original infatuation into a discovery of the transformative power of first person narrative.
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.
Review
"Devastatingly funny and sublime. . . a new classic.andquot;
— The Seattle Stranger
Review
"Ever since I read I Love Dick, I have revered it as one of the most explosive, revealing, lacerating, and unusual memoirs ever committed to the page . . . I Love Dick is never a comfortable read, and it is by turns exasperating, horrifying, and lurid, but it is never less than genuine, and often completely illuminating about the life of the mind."
— Rick Moody, Post Road
Review
"A little masterpiece of late twenieth century literature."
andmdash; East Hampton Star
Review
"Unexpectedly riveting."
— BookForum
Review
"The biggest art revelation of the year."
— The New Zealand Listener
Review
"Tart, brazen and funny. . . a cautionary tale, I Love Dick raises disturbing but compelling questions about female social behavior, power, control."
— The Nation"Ever since I read I Love Dick, I have revered it as one of the most explosive, revealing, lacerating, and unusual memoirs ever committed to the page . . . I Love Dick is never a comfortable read, and it is by turns exasperating, horrifying, and lurid, but it is never less than genuine, and often completely illuminating about the life of the mind."
— Rick Moody, Post Road"The biggest art revelation of the year."
— The New Zealand Listener"A little masterpiece of late twenieth century literature."
— East Hampton Star"Unexpectedly riveting."
— BookForum"Devastatingly funny and sublime. . . a new classic."
— The Seattle Stranger
Review
Tart, brazen and funny... a cautionary tale, I Love Dick raises disturbing but compelling questions about female social behavior, power, control. < b=""> Rick Moody <> - - < -="" i="" -=""> - Post Road - < -="" -="">
Review
A clever, finely crafted crossover between life, love and cultural studies. Semiotext(e)
Review
But my favorite example of the genre is from nearly 20 years ago, and it's by a woman. Chris Kraus's "I Love Dick" offers the story of a woman named Chris Kraus -- also an experimental filmmaker, just like the author -- reckoning with her unrequited love for "Dick ____," a cultural critic with whom she becomes obsessed. The narrative is an exploration of desire as something other than passivity or inadequacy ("I think desire isn't lack, it's surplus energy -- a claustrophobia inside your skin") and relentless romantic pursuit not as self-degradation but a kind of generative, creative act. < b=""> Peter Beilharz <> - - < -="" i="" -=""> - The Australian - < -="" -="">
Review
A little masterpiece of late twenieth century literature. Leslie Jamison - The New York Times
Review
Devastatingly funny and sublime... a new classic. - < -="" i="" -=""> - East Hampton Star - < -="" -="">
Review
The biggest art revelation of the year. - < -="" i="" -=""> - The Nation - < -="" -="">
Review
Unexpectedly riveting. - < -="" i="" -=""> - The New Zealand Listener - < -="" -="">
Synopsis
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 Dick instantly elicited violent controversies and attracted a host of passionate admirers. The story is gripping enough: in 1994 a married, failed independent filmmaker, turning forty, falls in love with a well-known theorist and endeavors to seduce him with the help of her husband. But when the theorist refuses to answer her letters, the husband and wife continue the correspondence for each other instead, imagining the fling the wife wishes to have with Dick. What follows is a breathless pursuit that takes the woman across America and away from her husband and far beyond her original infatuation into a discovery of the transformative power of first person narrative. 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.
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
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. The story is gripping enough: in 1994 a married, failed independent filmmaker, turning forty, falls in love with a well-known theorist and endeavors to seduce him with the help of her husband. But when the theorist refuses to answer her letters, the husband and wife continue the correspondence for each other instead, imagining the fling the wife wishes to have with Dick. What follows is a breathless pursuit that takes the woman across America and away from her husband ;and far beyond her original infatuation into a discovery of the transformative power of first person narrative. 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.
About the Author
Chris Kraus is the author of the novels Aliens and Anorexia, I Love Dick, and Summer of Hate as well as Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness and Where Art Belongs, all published by Semiotext(e). A Professor of Writing at the European Graduate School, she writes for various magazines and lives in Los Angeles.Eileen Myles, named by BUST magazine "the rock star of modern poetry," is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and prose, including Chelsea Girls, Cool for You, Sorry, Tree, and Not Me (Semiotext(e), 1991), and is the coeditor of The New Fuck You (Semiotext(e), 1995). Myles was head of the writing program at University of California, San Diego, from 2002 to 2007, and she has written extensively on art and writing and the cultural scene. Most recently, she received a fellowship from the Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Foundation.