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I Love Dick
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.
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.
239 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1997
1863 people are currently reading
42466 people want to read
About the author
Chris Kraus
76 books901 followersChris Kraus is a writer and critic. She studied acting and spent almost two decades making performances and experimental films in New York before moving to Los Angeles where she began writing. Her novels include Aliens & Anorexia, I Love Dick, Torpor, and Summer of Hate. She has published three books of cultural criticism—Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness, Where Art Belongs, and Social Practices. I Love Dick was adapted for television and her literary biography After Kathy Acker was published by Semiotext(e) and Penguin Press. A former Guggenheim Fellow, Kraus held the Mary Routt Chair of Writing at Scripps College in 2019 and was Writer-in-Residence at ArtCenter College between 2020–2024. She has written for various magazines and has been a coeditor of the independent press Semiotext(e) since 1990. Her work has been praised for its damning intelligence, vulnerability, and dazzling speed and has been translated into seventeen languages. She lives in Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,487 reviews
December 22, 2018
Finally the ordeal of reading a book with this title on public transportation is over.
January 19, 2009
this book is fucking amazing. i read it straight through without doing anything else all weekend. it's rare that a book would inspire such monomania in me. chris kraus is just so savagely smart and dissects the role of women in the art world like a surgeon. she's confessional and angry and theoretical (in the clearest way) and poetic all at once. she says all the things that you want to say but aren't supposed to say: like that academic feminism is full of shit, that artists who don't conform to pre-made theoretical/critical categories are made marginal, that women's heterosexual desire is considered abject. this book set a little part of me free.
February 19, 2016
this premise and the actual story behind this book just seems mean. I have no idea why a book about a woman who continually forces her sexual/romantic/intellectual fantasies on a strange man who asks her to please stop repeatedly is so radically feminist. the fact that this was a real situation just kind of makes it worse. is it radical because it proves that, like men, women can also violate peoples boundaries for their art with no qualms? I feel like a lot of reviewers try to absolve Kraus/her character of her actions by throwing a bunch of academic language and feminist theory at it. Going on about mimetic desire and the radical recognition of female abjection, while totally ignoring what is actually happening in the text itself. I'm just like nah. i've read reviews that discuss the way Dick Hebdige was deeply upset by this book but that it shouldn't matter because men having been using and discarding female muses for centuries. like.. true. but also that seems like such a perversion of any type of liberation. like i have a lot of bitterness in my heart just as much as the next girl.. but the praise for this book is so utterly tone-deaf. i can't even imagine what jill soloway is going to turn this in to but i'm going to need to stay far far away from it. I feel no connection to this as a feminist text what so ever. it makes me feel gross. the adoration for this book in certain circles is so confusing to me. I think about this all the time and still just don't get it. ?????
June 21, 2024
ha ha
now for all the tiktok girls engaging in stolen valor...THIS is peak delulu.
i found part one of this, about a woman who convinces herself and her husband that a man flirting with her means they basically had sex, and thereby she is in love with him and ultimately must leave her marriage, so bizarre and interesting.
chris and sylvere's descent into obsession is really fascinating, and its implications about monogamy and misogyny even more so.
part two, which kind of devolves into unrelated essays, not so much.
bottom line: women should be allowed to be insane, as a treat.
3.5
now for all the tiktok girls engaging in stolen valor...THIS is peak delulu.
i found part one of this, about a woman who convinces herself and her husband that a man flirting with her means they basically had sex, and thereby she is in love with him and ultimately must leave her marriage, so bizarre and interesting.
chris and sylvere's descent into obsession is really fascinating, and its implications about monogamy and misogyny even more so.
part two, which kind of devolves into unrelated essays, not so much.
bottom line: women should be allowed to be insane, as a treat.
3.5
September 4, 2010
If there is an afterlife (probs no) and you can pick your own heaven from all the moments of your life I'd like mine to be eternally reliving the first time I read this book.
June 2, 2017
Often spectacular and VERY complex book - I think the (absolutely essential) afterward hits it on the head: the preoccupation with whether or not this is memoir or fiction, epistolary or invented, (a preoccupation, I'll add, that I was a victim of myself) masks the real achievement here, which is a structural masterclass in time management and a brutal look at love. The 3 characters, Chris, Sylvere, and Dick himself, never behave in "expected" ways and yet always move with authenticity and a strange sort of grace. I love, love, loved big chunks of this book. Oh, and the ending, a couple of quick paragraphs, is one of the best I've read.
Before I get into my criticism, I'll also say this: The interpretation and writing about this book has been colored by a misogyny that the book itself anticipates: I'm not sure why male writers are "allowed" to be sprawling, messy, and sexual without being "debased," but all this talk of the novel being bold and honest seems to reduce the accomplishments of the line level prose (delicious turns of phrase), the research (a section on Hannah Wilke, in particular, and also the writing on schizophrenia), and the genre-bending intelligence. I WANTED to give this 5-stars.
But! I don't know. There are issues - I think the focus on cultural criticism hurts it - there are LONG meanders that I had to fight my way through because I was hungry for the plot. The section in Latin America seems to be a floating separate essay that was re-purposed (and the character of Chis is annoyingly effaced for way too long, though she's there.) It repeats itself way too often (I believe this is a problem of assemblage, but it can't be ignored). And the intertextuality occasionally feels arbitrary or imposed. I had a very similar issue with NYRB's recent LETTERS FROM MONTMARTE, which I couldn't get through. Explaining what characters value culturally isn't the same as experiencing culture.
So, 4.2 stars, or so. And a more important lesson than quite a few of the books I've loved more than this.
Also - you'll never get more stares on the subway then when you read this. It must be how 50 Shades of Grey aficionados feel. It must be why people buy Kindles
Before I get into my criticism, I'll also say this: The interpretation and writing about this book has been colored by a misogyny that the book itself anticipates: I'm not sure why male writers are "allowed" to be sprawling, messy, and sexual without being "debased," but all this talk of the novel being bold and honest seems to reduce the accomplishments of the line level prose (delicious turns of phrase), the research (a section on Hannah Wilke, in particular, and also the writing on schizophrenia), and the genre-bending intelligence. I WANTED to give this 5-stars.
But! I don't know. There are issues - I think the focus on cultural criticism hurts it - there are LONG meanders that I had to fight my way through because I was hungry for the plot. The section in Latin America seems to be a floating separate essay that was re-purposed (and the character of Chis is annoyingly effaced for way too long, though she's there.) It repeats itself way too often (I believe this is a problem of assemblage, but it can't be ignored). And the intertextuality occasionally feels arbitrary or imposed. I had a very similar issue with NYRB's recent LETTERS FROM MONTMARTE, which I couldn't get through. Explaining what characters value culturally isn't the same as experiencing culture.
So, 4.2 stars, or so. And a more important lesson than quite a few of the books I've loved more than this.
Also - you'll never get more stares on the subway then when you read this. It must be how 50 Shades of Grey aficionados feel. It must be why people buy Kindles
August 2, 2025
I Love Dick is both a novel and not a novel. It’s an exploration of the roles and dynamics between the sexes when they want each other. Ultimately, it’s a work of surrender to both sexual and artistic obsession.
The story starts when Chris Kraus, author and protagonist, is failing to meet expectations of herself as a filmmaker, is dulled and worn by her marriage, and suddenly comes alive in the presence of a stranger. That awakening consumes her and drives the action of the book. But it also calls the book into being because Chris finds the story telling itself: first in the form of letters to her obsession (yes, his name is Dick); next in letters from her husband to Dick acknowledging that obsession (yes, the husband gets a say); and then in written accounts of how this affects their marriage (suddenly they find themselves able to have real conversations again). All this is funneled into new creative territory for Chris, now part memoir as well as novel, and we readers hold the project in our hands. The artist has managed to capture one of the most vibrant shifts in her life in what feels like real time.
Rarely do we record the heightened moments in our lives while they’re in motion; mostly we need time to make sense of things. Yet time creates a shift in our angle of experience, and we lose the immediacy. While many prefer distance and reflection, to me the immediacy of works like I Love Dick is part of our lifeblood, the writer inviting the reader smack-into-the-middle of their unfolding. For some, that’s the ultimate act of intimacy.
You know those kitchen-sex scenes where a couple gets so hot for each other they just shove aside everything unneeded to make room for what matters, what must happen, between them? Well, although I’ve never had kitchen sex, I’ve experienced this surge while creating artwork: there’s nothing to do but give in. What is that engine inside us that drives us towards one thing or another? Do we fool ourselves into thinking that we even have a choice?
In this way, Kraus captures something at once scientific and spiritual: what makes us who we are in each moment? Why do we do the things we do? Is certain movement in our lives inevitable, and our only choices to either go with the flow, or wrestle it into some other shape along the way?
I’m glad Chris Kraus moved towards this, and maybe I’m even grateful for how she wrestled it into something else. I’m not sure she and Dick were ever a love match, but I will say her commitment to her art eclipsed any chance of that. “But you don’t know me,” Dick says more than once. Has a lover ever said that to you? How much do we need to know?
This work lays bare not only the objectification of women, but also of men. Dick becomes the one unseen and used, any intimacy eclipsed by Chris’ act of creation. What’s more interesting is how she sacrifices herself for her art. Is it a human need to carve out one place where we can truly surrender? Is it easier to surrender to a stranger?
There’s much more to this work than what I’ve described. Most of the exploration feels cerebral, at times even academic, despite the life force underneath. The author inserts facts about Jennifer Harbury’s time in Guatemala in the 1980s, discusses poets, painters, politicians, filmmakers, philosophers and art critics, talks about her own place in the world as a woman and as a Jew. I found most of it interesting even if I didn’t get how it all fit together. I’d have to reread those parts to create a connection, and I think there’s something of value in saying it didn’t come naturally to me.
I got tired towards the end, a little numb to the repetition and headiness of it. But if your brain enjoys this kind of play with something so basic, yet meaningful, you are bound to find enough morsels here to satisfy.
The story starts when Chris Kraus, author and protagonist, is failing to meet expectations of herself as a filmmaker, is dulled and worn by her marriage, and suddenly comes alive in the presence of a stranger. That awakening consumes her and drives the action of the book. But it also calls the book into being because Chris finds the story telling itself: first in the form of letters to her obsession (yes, his name is Dick); next in letters from her husband to Dick acknowledging that obsession (yes, the husband gets a say); and then in written accounts of how this affects their marriage (suddenly they find themselves able to have real conversations again). All this is funneled into new creative territory for Chris, now part memoir as well as novel, and we readers hold the project in our hands. The artist has managed to capture one of the most vibrant shifts in her life in what feels like real time.
Rarely do we record the heightened moments in our lives while they’re in motion; mostly we need time to make sense of things. Yet time creates a shift in our angle of experience, and we lose the immediacy. While many prefer distance and reflection, to me the immediacy of works like I Love Dick is part of our lifeblood, the writer inviting the reader smack-into-the-middle of their unfolding. For some, that’s the ultimate act of intimacy.
You know those kitchen-sex scenes where a couple gets so hot for each other they just shove aside everything unneeded to make room for what matters, what must happen, between them? Well, although I’ve never had kitchen sex, I’ve experienced this surge while creating artwork: there’s nothing to do but give in. What is that engine inside us that drives us towards one thing or another? Do we fool ourselves into thinking that we even have a choice?
In this way, Kraus captures something at once scientific and spiritual: what makes us who we are in each moment? Why do we do the things we do? Is certain movement in our lives inevitable, and our only choices to either go with the flow, or wrestle it into some other shape along the way?
I’m glad Chris Kraus moved towards this, and maybe I’m even grateful for how she wrestled it into something else. I’m not sure she and Dick were ever a love match, but I will say her commitment to her art eclipsed any chance of that. “But you don’t know me,” Dick says more than once. Has a lover ever said that to you? How much do we need to know?
This work lays bare not only the objectification of women, but also of men. Dick becomes the one unseen and used, any intimacy eclipsed by Chris’ act of creation. What’s more interesting is how she sacrifices herself for her art. Is it a human need to carve out one place where we can truly surrender? Is it easier to surrender to a stranger?
There’s much more to this work than what I’ve described. Most of the exploration feels cerebral, at times even academic, despite the life force underneath. The author inserts facts about Jennifer Harbury’s time in Guatemala in the 1980s, discusses poets, painters, politicians, filmmakers, philosophers and art critics, talks about her own place in the world as a woman and as a Jew. I found most of it interesting even if I didn’t get how it all fit together. I’d have to reread those parts to create a connection, and I think there’s something of value in saying it didn’t come naturally to me.
I got tired towards the end, a little numb to the repetition and headiness of it. But if your brain enjoys this kind of play with something so basic, yet meaningful, you are bound to find enough morsels here to satisfy.
May 18, 2017
. . . Chris and I are sensible people. We don't do anything without a reason. . . . and then you came . . .
What a disappointment! I picked this one up because it appeared on a list of funniest books, though other than the absurdity of the premise, there's not a whole lot of chuckles here. Chris and her husband Sylvère are not exactly embroiled in marital bliss. To put it bluntly, it's been a long time since they've had sex. (I'm guessing it's laziness, not love that's keeping these two together. ) Then, after the couple spends one evening with the utterly charmless Dick, Chris inexplicably falls head over heels in love with him. Go figure . . . AND, instead of breaking his rival's nose, or at least keying his car, Sylvère helps Chris attempt to woo Dick. The two begin bombarding Dick with letters and faxes. Though I must say, for Sylvère , there's an upside to all this - he and Chris have started having sex again.
. . . thanks to Dick, Sylvère and Chris have spent the four most intense days of their lives together. Sylvere wonders if the only way that he can feel close to her is when someone else is threatening to tear them apart.
But, poor Chris is quickly going off the deep end in her passion for the Dick. She likens her feelings to a religious experience -
Knowing you's like knowing Jesus.
Like Saint Paul and Buddha who'd experienced their great conversions as they hit 40, I was Born Again in Dick.
Yeah, that's creepy enough. Now, let's add some stalkery:
Today I phoned your colleague Marvin Dietrichson, to find out what you did today. What you said in seminar. What you were wearing. I'm finding new ways to be close to you. It's okay, Dick, we can do the relationship your way.
I will not be ignored,Dan Dick!
This one started out okay, but I lost interest about 75 pages in. It became too much like reading an intellectual's diary . . . an intellectual who is trying to prove to herself, and others, just how much of an intellectual she can be by making as many literary allusions as possible. Only the fact that I'm a cheapskate, and dammit, I paid good money for it, made me finish the book.
Confession time - one strange thing occurred during the reading of this book, which I will relate only because I'm assuming you're reading this review because it had dick in the title, and you're hoping for something stimulating.
I had a really hot sex dream about Matt Damon, a guy whose Howdy-Doody face I'd normally like to punch. Ugh! I blame you, Dick.
Hope Chris boils your rabbit!
What a disappointment! I picked this one up because it appeared on a list of funniest books, though other than the absurdity of the premise, there's not a whole lot of chuckles here. Chris and her husband Sylvère are not exactly embroiled in marital bliss. To put it bluntly, it's been a long time since they've had sex. (I'm guessing it's laziness, not love that's keeping these two together. ) Then, after the couple spends one evening with the utterly charmless Dick, Chris inexplicably falls head over heels in love with him. Go figure . . . AND, instead of breaking his rival's nose, or at least keying his car, Sylvère helps Chris attempt to woo Dick. The two begin bombarding Dick with letters and faxes. Though I must say, for Sylvère , there's an upside to all this - he and Chris have started having sex again.
. . . thanks to Dick, Sylvère and Chris have spent the four most intense days of their lives together. Sylvere wonders if the only way that he can feel close to her is when someone else is threatening to tear them apart.
But, poor Chris is quickly going off the deep end in her passion for the Dick. She likens her feelings to a religious experience -
Knowing you's like knowing Jesus.
Like Saint Paul and Buddha who'd experienced their great conversions as they hit 40, I was Born Again in Dick.
Yeah, that's creepy enough. Now, let's add some stalkery:
Today I phoned your colleague Marvin Dietrichson, to find out what you did today. What you said in seminar. What you were wearing. I'm finding new ways to be close to you. It's okay, Dick, we can do the relationship your way.
I will not be ignored,
This one started out okay, but I lost interest about 75 pages in. It became too much like reading an intellectual's diary . . . an intellectual who is trying to prove to herself, and others, just how much of an intellectual she can be by making as many literary allusions as possible. Only the fact that I'm a cheapskate, and dammit, I paid good money for it, made me finish the book.
Confession time - one strange thing occurred during the reading of this book, which I will relate only because I'm assuming you're reading this review because it had dick in the title, and you're hoping for something stimulating.
I had a really hot sex dream about Matt Damon, a guy whose Howdy-Doody face I'd normally like to punch. Ugh! I blame you, Dick.
Hope Chris boils your rabbit!
January 1, 2016
I really dislike this book. It is self-absorbed and mean-spirited, a deadly combination. I read it in November 2015 but gave it time before I felt comfortable sharing my response. You see, I have read many reviews that praise the book highly. I have tried to believe them; I don't. I think this is a book you are supposed to like, as if liking it is a kind of litmus test of how sophisticated you are. I am happy to be unsophisticated if that means rejecting the stalking and toying with the life of a real person as this book does. Disclosure: I have met Dick Hebdige; he is a decent guy. But NOBODY deserves to be used this way. I often evaluate texts or situations by switching genders of the actors. In this case, if a man wrote a book like this about a real woman: holy cow, it would (should) be drug (rightfully so) across the coals. And here it is reprinted and once again receiving aclaim. Disappointed in the book and all those who have praised it.
dnf
November 29, 2024Bailed at 25%. I really didn't get wet for this.
(crumples up paper, tosses over shoulder)
This book failed to rise to the occasion....
(crumples up paper, tosses over shoulder)
I thought it would be harder...
(crumples up paper, tosses over shoulder)
Life's too short to hang with a book that doesn't....perform
(crumples up paper, tosses over shoulder)
I didn't finish. And that's all you need to know about dick.
(I give up)
(crumples up paper, tosses over shoulder)
This book failed to rise to the occasion....
(crumples up paper, tosses over shoulder)
I thought it would be harder...
(crumples up paper, tosses over shoulder)
Life's too short to hang with a book that doesn't....perform
(crumples up paper, tosses over shoulder)
I didn't finish. And that's all you need to know about dick.
(I give up)
March 3, 2017
I just try, and try, and try, and try to love this book the way that every respectable person seems to, but the whole time I'm reading it I want so much for her to join a lesbian separatist commune. Like, I'm totally through with hearing about dick, you know? I know this is not a morally defensible position. Maybe one day I'll realize I actually secretly loved it all along, rom-com style, because otherwise I don't know how to explain how mad it makes me.
May 9, 2017
Wow, this is awful.
The last 100 pages are just complete ramble and feel like the journal of a mentally disturbed person, not a writer in control of their craft.
Initially the book, which has a very clever title, is moderately interesting. You move along with the protagonist exploring-with her and her husband-this imaginary connection that she has with this man Dick. The honest correspondence and exchanges that happen between the couple are occasionally insightful, and even a little refreshing at times. But the book was hardly teetering on greatness, and when she switches to complete babble, it loses anything that it had.
The author seems intelligent, but she tries very hard to convey that she has a depth of culture and knowledge that goes far beyond the average layman. This pseudo-intellectualism feels like a college student who just finished sophomore year and now knows everything about the world. The random injection of vulgarity doesn't help either; whatever its intent-to illustrate the normalness of the writer, or to shock the reader (awake perhaps?)-it feels contrived.
If this book was a piece of art, it would be in a contemporary museum; the ones where people gather around an exhibit of an old trash can to discuss the artist's intent, only to realize, they're all just staring at a real trash can and this is where the garbage goes.
The last 100 pages are just complete ramble and feel like the journal of a mentally disturbed person, not a writer in control of their craft.
Initially the book, which has a very clever title, is moderately interesting. You move along with the protagonist exploring-with her and her husband-this imaginary connection that she has with this man Dick. The honest correspondence and exchanges that happen between the couple are occasionally insightful, and even a little refreshing at times. But the book was hardly teetering on greatness, and when she switches to complete babble, it loses anything that it had.
The author seems intelligent, but she tries very hard to convey that she has a depth of culture and knowledge that goes far beyond the average layman. This pseudo-intellectualism feels like a college student who just finished sophomore year and now knows everything about the world. The random injection of vulgarity doesn't help either; whatever its intent-to illustrate the normalness of the writer, or to shock the reader (awake perhaps?)-it feels contrived.
If this book was a piece of art, it would be in a contemporary museum; the ones where people gather around an exhibit of an old trash can to discuss the artist's intent, only to realize, they're all just staring at a real trash can and this is where the garbage goes.
August 6, 2021
I could tell straight away that this is a complex book and that I shouldn’t read it in short snippets of downtime at work as originally planned.
I liked the originality of the format, mainly letters but overall I think it was too complex for me to truly enjoy.
I liked the originality of the format, mainly letters but overall I think it was too complex for me to truly enjoy.
September 11, 2010
I've never read a novel like this before. A blending of the epistolary novel, feminist manifesto, art criticism, tell-all reality-memoir, critical theory, personal essay, and diary. Somehow it all works together, and I would even say that it is a Great Novel.
The first part, which establishes the narrative impetus (Chris, the author, falls in love/crush with an acquaintance (Dick) and, together with her husband, writes love letters to him but doesn't send them).
The conceit can only go so far (although conceit is the wrong word here, since I think this is pretty much non-fiction, or maybe slightly edited non-fiction), so after the first part, the rest of the "novel" is a slowly evolving amalgamation. The obsession for Dick continues and changes. Her relationship with her husband changes. Her life and relation to her art changes. Her view of feminism changes. She begins to see everything through the lens of Dick. Dick-lens.
It's really hard to describe, but it's super smart, very funny, and sad all at the same time. By the end, the letters get long, and ramble about all types of subjects, but they're written so well that it doesn't matter if it's about an obscure painter or performance artist, it somehow still fits into the book's unique structure. I still flipped the pages maddeningly because I started interpreting everything through the Dick-lens, through what she is discovering about her current situation. It's amazing that she was able to bring these different intellectual subjects so much into the sphere of the personal... where it actually feels like it matters.
Bonus: makes for great reading in the men's locker room.
The first part, which establishes the narrative impetus (Chris, the author, falls in love/crush with an acquaintance (Dick) and, together with her husband, writes love letters to him but doesn't send them).
The conceit can only go so far (although conceit is the wrong word here, since I think this is pretty much non-fiction, or maybe slightly edited non-fiction), so after the first part, the rest of the "novel" is a slowly evolving amalgamation. The obsession for Dick continues and changes. Her relationship with her husband changes. Her life and relation to her art changes. Her view of feminism changes. She begins to see everything through the lens of Dick. Dick-lens.
It's really hard to describe, but it's super smart, very funny, and sad all at the same time. By the end, the letters get long, and ramble about all types of subjects, but they're written so well that it doesn't matter if it's about an obscure painter or performance artist, it somehow still fits into the book's unique structure. I still flipped the pages maddeningly because I started interpreting everything through the Dick-lens, through what she is discovering about her current situation. It's amazing that she was able to bring these different intellectual subjects so much into the sphere of the personal... where it actually feels like it matters.
Bonus: makes for great reading in the men's locker room.
April 5, 2019
This book is about a lot of things, art, feminism, love, obsession, criticism, sex, self perception. I love all the themes it touches, and I am crazy with how original and brilliant it is. Kraus balances so many things, and makes herself the object of a great story, told in a manner which makes you feel you are in the middle of a performance, and sometimes feeling pretty uncomfortable. And that is actually part of the charm. Dick is one of the protagonists, even if unwilling to be a part of it, since he is an object of attention, not a character in himself. That is kind of cool, since it´s the opposite of how (heterosexual/male-written) literature generally works.
Totally recommend this, and will look for everything I can find by Kraus.
Totally recommend this, and will look for everything I can find by Kraus.
March 20, 2016
It's difficult to say what I Love Dick actually is. It's not strictly a novel, but nor is it exactly right to describe it as non-fiction. Rather, it's a sort of semi-fictionalised memoir that takes in critical theory, feminist critique, art history, etc. In her afterword, Joan Hawkins dubs it 'theoretical fiction'. At its heart is the story of the infatuation Chris Kraus the character (not necessarily to be confused with Chris Kraus the author) has with Dick, an acquaintance of her husband Sylvère, whom the couple have dinner with at the very beginning of the book. It's made up of letters Chris and Sylvère write to Dick - some are actually sent to him, but most aren't - and everything that results from the infatuation and the expression of it through these letters: proposals for art projects (of which this book is arguably the final incarnation), a continuous system of critique, Chris's 'lonely girl phenomenology', a deconstruction of the idea of a love triangle.
There's a lot I could say about this, but I don't feel qualified to. I hope one day someone else will write the review of it I'd like to see (the closest thing I've found so far is this LRB piece by Jenny Turner). I Love Dick is thought-provoking, certainly, but also infuriating, narcissistic and soaked in the author's/characters' privilege. In particular, I felt aggravated by Chris's attempts to assume a kind of starving artist identity while frequently referencing the swathe of properties she owns (with Sylvère), and then there's the namedropping... oh god, the namedropping. With the current climate of online feminism being what it is, I'm really surprised I haven't seen wider critique of this - especially from intersectional perspectives - along with the recent resurgence in the book's popularity.
I Love Dick is not 'unreadable', as its harshest critics call it; that's the least of its problems, and it is, in fact, very much what most people would consider readable, with strong momentum and enough of a conventional plot - the continued question of whether there is or isn't, will or won't be a relationship between Chris and Dick, and how he will respond to Chris and Sylvère's obsessive project - to keep even casual readers invested in its outcome. I can even see why the ending might be deemed shocking (if you related to and/or empathised with Chris), but I greeted it with a shrug rather than taking it like a punch to the gut. I never felt I was reading/experiencing this story and its philosophical revelations as a 'fellow woman' but rather as an outsider to a story that belongs to a wealthy American artist. But I was, admittedly, reading it from a personal perspective and not in any kind of critical or theoretical context.
There's a lot I could say about this, but I don't feel qualified to. I hope one day someone else will write the review of it I'd like to see (the closest thing I've found so far is this LRB piece by Jenny Turner). I Love Dick is thought-provoking, certainly, but also infuriating, narcissistic and soaked in the author's/characters' privilege. In particular, I felt aggravated by Chris's attempts to assume a kind of starving artist identity while frequently referencing the swathe of properties she owns (with Sylvère), and then there's the namedropping... oh god, the namedropping. With the current climate of online feminism being what it is, I'm really surprised I haven't seen wider critique of this - especially from intersectional perspectives - along with the recent resurgence in the book's popularity.
I Love Dick is not 'unreadable', as its harshest critics call it; that's the least of its problems, and it is, in fact, very much what most people would consider readable, with strong momentum and enough of a conventional plot - the continued question of whether there is or isn't, will or won't be a relationship between Chris and Dick, and how he will respond to Chris and Sylvère's obsessive project - to keep even casual readers invested in its outcome. I can even see why the ending might be deemed shocking (if you related to and/or empathised with Chris), but I greeted it with a shrug rather than taking it like a punch to the gut. I never felt I was reading/experiencing this story and its philosophical revelations as a 'fellow woman' but rather as an outsider to a story that belongs to a wealthy American artist. But I was, admittedly, reading it from a personal perspective and not in any kind of critical or theoretical context.
sampled
August 9, 2017Loved the opening pages, the first 20 or so, the introduction of the conceit, but found it irritating and kinda smug/self-satisfied by page 75, and then boring by page 95 (her drive east) where I skimmed ahead to an unremarkable chapter toward the end called "Dick Writes Back." Didn't find it all that interesting or original or "theoretical" or funny -- the most enjoyable bit is probably the title. I was very aware of the title on the cover as I rode the subway to and from work. But it's ultimately not for me (I prefer to read better books, hardy har). Goes firmly in my "too many books etc etc" pile . . .
January 28, 2013
1. This is a difficult book. Chris Kraus, or at least the Chris Kraus in this book, is a difficult person.
2. The early part of the book, with Sylvère and Chris' letters and their caffeinated gamesmanship, is fun. The latter part involves far more rants, digressions, and indulgences. It's often bracing, since Kraus writes energetically about stuff she really cares about, making connections in every direction. If you like critical theory, you might think it fun. I did not find it fun.
3. "I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-destructive but above all else *public* is the most revolutionary thing in the world." No. Worthwhile, necessary, yes. But what an untrue thing to say in a world starving for revolution. What an incredibly easy thing to say for Chris Kraus, whose drive to make art of her own talkative, paradoxical, and self-destructive travails just happens to be, according to Chris Kraus, the world's most revolutionary desire. And what a vast cop-out, what a vast insult to all the actual revolutionaries who've thought and fought and risked and done a whole lot more than just documented how deliciously complex their internal fuckedupness is.
4. One of the themes of the book, and particularly the latter half, is the question of Dick's privacy given Chris' publication of her letters. The theme in general is interesting (& she references other women who'd done interesting things with it: Hannah Wilke, Sophie Calle). But the real Dick plays such a tiny role here -- as the book acknowledges once or twice, Dick is pure projection, a fantasy that happens to require the involvement of a man -- that his privacy felt moot.
5. It has been argued, not unconvincingly, that the rules of grammar are repressive and patriarchal. But this patriarchy-steeped, easily-annoyed reader found himself wishing that Kraus had either hired a copy editor or learned the difference between its and it's.
6. At one point, Kraus weaves in the (interesting! moving!) story of Jennifer Harbury, an American activist in Guatemala. She quotes Fassbinder: "I believe in searching for a kind of love that somehow involves all of humanity." To which she adds: "I got my voice back several days after leaving Guatemala." This is halfway through the book. After magnanimously crediting a brutally oppressed country with giving her back her authorial voice, she never mentions it again. And insofar as there is a kind of love in this book, it involves only an infinitesimal slice of humanity: the interior of Chris Kraus' (creative, twitchy) brain.
2. The early part of the book, with Sylvère and Chris' letters and their caffeinated gamesmanship, is fun. The latter part involves far more rants, digressions, and indulgences. It's often bracing, since Kraus writes energetically about stuff she really cares about, making connections in every direction. If you like critical theory, you might think it fun. I did not find it fun.
3. "I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-destructive but above all else *public* is the most revolutionary thing in the world." No. Worthwhile, necessary, yes. But what an untrue thing to say in a world starving for revolution. What an incredibly easy thing to say for Chris Kraus, whose drive to make art of her own talkative, paradoxical, and self-destructive travails just happens to be, according to Chris Kraus, the world's most revolutionary desire. And what a vast cop-out, what a vast insult to all the actual revolutionaries who've thought and fought and risked and done a whole lot more than just documented how deliciously complex their internal fuckedupness is.
4. One of the themes of the book, and particularly the latter half, is the question of Dick's privacy given Chris' publication of her letters. The theme in general is interesting (& she references other women who'd done interesting things with it: Hannah Wilke, Sophie Calle). But the real Dick plays such a tiny role here -- as the book acknowledges once or twice, Dick is pure projection, a fantasy that happens to require the involvement of a man -- that his privacy felt moot.
5. It has been argued, not unconvincingly, that the rules of grammar are repressive and patriarchal. But this patriarchy-steeped, easily-annoyed reader found himself wishing that Kraus had either hired a copy editor or learned the difference between its and it's.
6. At one point, Kraus weaves in the (interesting! moving!) story of Jennifer Harbury, an American activist in Guatemala. She quotes Fassbinder: "I believe in searching for a kind of love that somehow involves all of humanity." To which she adds: "I got my voice back several days after leaving Guatemala." This is halfway through the book. After magnanimously crediting a brutally oppressed country with giving her back her authorial voice, she never mentions it again. And insofar as there is a kind of love in this book, it involves only an infinitesimal slice of humanity: the interior of Chris Kraus' (creative, twitchy) brain.
January 2, 2017
Thought I'd love this book. I mostly hated it. I would've DNFed it except that once in awhile there'd be a line that made me want to air punch. So I'm going to put those together and the rest of this reading experience behind me.
September 9, 2016
It took me years to climb over the grad-school critical theory wall which seems to surround this book and actually pick it up and read it: now after reading the book I remain completely ambivalent toward the post-structuralist reception of the book as some kind of harbinger of a "new kind of fiction" and instead argue a simple point which is that Chris Kraus wrote a wonderful, engaging, brilliant novel, much in the same way that hundreds or thousands of other writers write wonderful, engaging, brilliant novels. There is nothing new about mixing autobiographical content into an ostensibly fictional environment, nor is it completely revolutionary to discuss other writers or writing within a given text -- our anecdotal example here could be almost the entirety of Russian literature, whose constituent texts endlessly reference others, answer questions posed in previous works, reuse characters conceived by other writers, discuss ideas posited in previous centuries.
That being said, I am drawn to this novel for one primary reason: it is a monument to honesty, to vulnerability, to fragility -- that is, to that human response to a frequently inhuman world.
That being said, I am drawn to this novel for one primary reason: it is a monument to honesty, to vulnerability, to fragility -- that is, to that human response to a frequently inhuman world.
July 23, 2017
The fuck was that?
December 2, 2015
....I continued reading it.
It doesn't get better.
It doesn't get better.
August 7, 2025
I have heard such a lot about this book, and I went in with such high expectations, so it almost feels like I let myself down.
This is a novel ish memoir documenting Chris's absolute obsession with Dick and her how husband almost becomes an accomplice in this obsession.
This is far more academic than I was expecting, and reading the Afterword confirms my suspicions, I didn't understand half of what this text was doing.
I did understand the obvious point of gender flipping the narratives and focusing on the female gaze, which could have been interesting if it was written in a way the average person could understand.
This is one of those highbrow books that some like to call literature, and you need a degree to understand, which is fundamentally my issue with feminism. It's not accessible to everyone.
Two stars.
This is a novel ish memoir documenting Chris's absolute obsession with Dick and her how husband almost becomes an accomplice in this obsession.
This is far more academic than I was expecting, and reading the Afterword confirms my suspicions, I didn't understand half of what this text was doing.
I did understand the obvious point of gender flipping the narratives and focusing on the female gaze, which could have been interesting if it was written in a way the average person could understand.
This is one of those highbrow books that some like to call literature, and you need a degree to understand, which is fundamentally my issue with feminism. It's not accessible to everyone.
Two stars.
August 31, 2025
Prologue
At the time of writing this prologue, I hadn't read the book, but I believe I'd seen several related and unrelated YouTube videos.
CRITIQUE:
A History of Her Desire
The character named Chris (a 39 year old failed experimental filmmaker) meets 46 year old Dick (an English cultural critic) at a sushi bar with her 56 year old husband Sylvère (a professor of French Theory at Columbia University, who is a "friendly acquaintance" of Dick).
Chris, "who is no intellectual", notices that Dick is making continual eye contact with her.
Assuming the conversation between the two men is largely professional and academic, there doesn't seem to be any intellectual reason for Dick to gape at her. Chris describes herself as having "pale anemic looks and a piercing gaze", so it's possible that she doesn't stimulate any sexual or erotic response from Dick.
Nevertheless, Chris falls in love with Dick. She wants to "separate herself from her coupleness".
She doesn't propose to terminate her marriage, but to have an extra-marital affair with Dick, with Sylvère's tacit approval.
Chris Kraus
"Every Letter is a Love Letter"
For the first part (40%) of the novel, both Chris and Sylvère purport to write love letters (this seems to be the pre-email era) to Dick. However, pretty soon, we learn that they don't actually send any of the letters to him.
The second part of the novel embraces theories of art and literature, and attempts to situate the novel within Continental Philosophy. Chris seems to grow in confidence and achieve an intellectual credibility (in contrast to the two men) during the second part.
The Banality of Love and Fantasy
The letters and their fate raise the question whether the affair is just a fantasy or whether it's real. Is it just a stratagem to create a fictional world and a fiction romance within it?
Chris asks whether its "just a dumb infatuation?" or whether she's using the letters as a mere device to invent specificity, no matter how banal?
Later, she writes to Dick:
Realising Her Fiction
Another way of putting these questions is to ask whether Chris is fictionalising her reality, or realising her fiction?
When she meets Dick, she confesses:
Maybe Dick (or the contemplation of Dick) was the twenty percent upon which the fiction was built.
Whether or not this claim is correct, the novel is both lucid and entertaining in a way that much post=modernist literature is not.
SOUNDTRACK:
At the time of writing this prologue, I hadn't read the book, but I believe I'd seen several related and unrelated YouTube videos.
CRITIQUE:
A History of Her Desire
The character named Chris (a 39 year old failed experimental filmmaker) meets 46 year old Dick (an English cultural critic) at a sushi bar with her 56 year old husband Sylvère (a professor of French Theory at Columbia University, who is a "friendly acquaintance" of Dick).
Chris, "who is no intellectual", notices that Dick is making continual eye contact with her.
Assuming the conversation between the two men is largely professional and academic, there doesn't seem to be any intellectual reason for Dick to gape at her. Chris describes herself as having "pale anemic looks and a piercing gaze", so it's possible that she doesn't stimulate any sexual or erotic response from Dick.
Nevertheless, Chris falls in love with Dick. She wants to "separate herself from her coupleness".
She doesn't propose to terminate her marriage, but to have an extra-marital affair with Dick, with Sylvère's tacit approval.
Chris Kraus
"Every Letter is a Love Letter"
For the first part (40%) of the novel, both Chris and Sylvère purport to write love letters (this seems to be the pre-email era) to Dick. However, pretty soon, we learn that they don't actually send any of the letters to him.
The second part of the novel embraces theories of art and literature, and attempts to situate the novel within Continental Philosophy. Chris seems to grow in confidence and achieve an intellectual credibility (in contrast to the two men) during the second part.
The Banality of Love and Fantasy
The letters and their fate raise the question whether the affair is just a fantasy or whether it's real. Is it just a stratagem to create a fictional world and a fiction romance within it?
"By writing Dick [I] was offering [my] life as Case Study...
" I'm torn between maintaining you as an entity to write to and talking with you as a person."
Chris asks whether its "just a dumb infatuation?" or whether she's using the letters as a mere device to invent specificity, no matter how banal?
Later, she writes to Dick:
"How could I make you understand the letters were the realest thing I'd ever done? By calling it a game you were negating all my feelings. Even if this love for you could never be returned I wanted recognition."
Realising Her Fiction
Another way of putting these questions is to ask whether Chris is fictionalising her reality, or realising her fiction?
When she meets Dick, she confesses:
"Look, I'll admit that eighty percent of this was fantasy, projection. But it had to start with something real..."
Maybe Dick (or the contemplation of Dick) was the twenty percent upon which the fiction was built.
Whether or not this claim is correct, the novel is both lucid and entertaining in a way that much post=modernist literature is not.
SOUNDTRACK:
June 2, 2017
Astoundingly page-turning yet philosophically powerful. Anais Nin (read back-to-back with this) fictionalizes her experiences to interesting reflective / psychoanalytic ends, but Kraus does so much more. This seems only barely fictionalized (perhaps! It's dangerous/reductive to place too much weight on that assumption!), but through conceptual rigor and density of thought this is much more the essential "novel" and even that descriptor falls far short of everything going on here. A post-modern epistolary self-immolation for the good of self and all. I really must read more Kraus now -- despite liking her films, this is somehow my first foray into her writing, or even into her press!
March 5, 2019
A friend who is a sociology teacher asked me to read this book and give her feedback. She's thinking about teaching it in a class next semester. I have no idea what class she's teaching or why it has to be this book, but I'm certain of one thing--this book will get people talking. The title alone will accomplish that much.
Full review at https://covers2covers.wordpress.com/2...
Full review at https://covers2covers.wordpress.com/2...
April 11, 2010
In a just world, this would be the next selection of the Oprah Book Club.
July 8, 2017
Videorecensione: https://youtu.be/ZIwDqSMDHbE
December 26, 2011
‘I love Dick’ is an autobiographical novel, but not a confessional’ says Chris Kraus. This is true. A confessional implies the unfurling of sins, or perceived sins. Chris Kraus has no such predilections: sin is not one of her life’s worries. What she has instead, is bucketfuls of humiliation, personal and professional failure, sexual abjection and bunny boiler syndrome which all fuse and implode on the eve of her 40-ieth Birthday. Now, when midlife crisis strikes, one (of the female variety that is) is meant to batten down the hatches, cry-me-a-river, eat their own bodyweight in Ben & Jerry’s, mope and wallow for a month or two, in private, of course, then pick up, shake off, and take up saving orang-utans in Borneo or some such. A little something for the weekend might also be added to the Sainsburys order, if one must. Really.
Chris Kraus, however, makes a case study of her mental maelstrom of humiliation and sexual abjection. Basically, she refuses to fall apart and put herself back together in private. Instead, she embraces the journey of deconstruction with open arms and celebrates it in a very public forum.
It helps that she is a founding editor of semiotexte(e) which published her book. And that her ex-husband Sylvere Lottringer has remained a pal in what must be the most humiliating portrayal any woman can invoke of her partner.
But back to matters at hand. As Kraus tears from coast to coast in the USA , ostensibly in pursuit of the eponymous Dick, but in reality on a quest of self discovery, in amongst her rather narcissistic ramblings she does treat us to a snapshot of the artistic scene, a freeze -frame from the highlights of her bohemian turn in NYC during the 1970/80s. Here is my to-do list for January based on Kraus’ recommendations:
1. Familiarise myself with art of: Chris Burden, Hannah Wilke, Cindy Sherman and Sophie Calle. And RB Kitaj.
2. Read Genet’s ‘Prisoner of Love’ and anything by Walter Abish
3. See ‘A winter tan’, at least one thing by Fassbinder and one by Ken Kobland and Eric Rohmer’s ‘my night at Maud’s’
4. Read anything I can get hold of by Barbara Barg: fantastic poet
5. Familiarise myself with Kierkegaard’s ‘third remove’
6. Find out who Marcel Mauss is.
7. Pick up “Leash,” a nihilistic story of a lesbian’s sadomasochism, with the shocking conclusion of her opting to have her hands bound and her vocal cords cut to live her life as a dog. Recommended and published by Kraus.
OK, I’ve got my New Year’s resolutions all set, I think.
Chris Kraus, however, makes a case study of her mental maelstrom of humiliation and sexual abjection. Basically, she refuses to fall apart and put herself back together in private. Instead, she embraces the journey of deconstruction with open arms and celebrates it in a very public forum.
It helps that she is a founding editor of semiotexte(e) which published her book. And that her ex-husband Sylvere Lottringer has remained a pal in what must be the most humiliating portrayal any woman can invoke of her partner.
But back to matters at hand. As Kraus tears from coast to coast in the USA , ostensibly in pursuit of the eponymous Dick, but in reality on a quest of self discovery, in amongst her rather narcissistic ramblings she does treat us to a snapshot of the artistic scene, a freeze -frame from the highlights of her bohemian turn in NYC during the 1970/80s. Here is my to-do list for January based on Kraus’ recommendations:
1. Familiarise myself with art of: Chris Burden, Hannah Wilke, Cindy Sherman and Sophie Calle. And RB Kitaj.
2. Read Genet’s ‘Prisoner of Love’ and anything by Walter Abish
3. See ‘A winter tan’, at least one thing by Fassbinder and one by Ken Kobland and Eric Rohmer’s ‘my night at Maud’s’
4. Read anything I can get hold of by Barbara Barg: fantastic poet
5. Familiarise myself with Kierkegaard’s ‘third remove’
6. Find out who Marcel Mauss is.
7. Pick up “Leash,” a nihilistic story of a lesbian’s sadomasochism, with the shocking conclusion of her opting to have her hands bound and her vocal cords cut to live her life as a dog. Recommended and published by Kraus.
OK, I’ve got my New Year’s resolutions all set, I think.
March 9, 2015
Chris Kraus succeeds at making the novel novel again. I LOVE DICK has more than just a great title, it’s a fantastic a story. This investigation of sexual obsession should bury its head in its navel but instead falls down a critical rabbit hole where it discovers a new genre. The Dick of the title is sort of a dick, but also a cypher representing every man, maybe even everyone reading the book. Because as Kraus the character becomes more infatuated with the character of Dick it’s impossible not to fall into something like love for the narrator. She’s endlessly fascinating in her self-conscious and intellectual dissection of this romance, this roman à clef, this abstractly triangular affair. But the story is more than merely about swooning for a distant academic, there’s art criticism and politics and gender studies. The novel detours into weighty essays that show Kraus to be a resourceful and insightful mind, and then the tributary essays join to feed the creative artist that is Kraus at her narrative best. The novel is framed by two thoughtful pieces on the work, but they’re hardly the last word. That belongs to Kraus, who has followed up her new form with further musings which have moved up to the front of my to-read list.
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