Do You like book I Love Dick (2006)?
A strange and marvelous multi-genre epistolary from a married woman to a man she meets once and falls utterly, completely in love with. There is something completely fascinating about resurrecting this form but inverting it, so that the woman is the artist, the wielder of language (therefore the maker-of-world), something really compelling about rebirth through humbling the self to unreciprocated desire, something utterly exhilarating about Kraus' interest in directly challenging the (very convenient) notion of art superseding the personal. In I Love Dick, Kraus is very very interested in dissolving the boundaries between "Art" and the "Personal" (and re-situating Self and Book outside of this dialectic) utterly, but in so productive a way that the reader doesn't even have to pass through confessionalism through the inquiry at all. In fact I can't think of much I don't like about this ranging, weird unapologetically ambitious book.
—Farren
from I LOVE DICK:S: Chris, I already told you he wouldn’t call. He has a tendency to pull away. We’ve taken the decision for him. Deciding on his thoughts. Remember the introduction that we wrote for him? In a sense Dick isn’t necessary. He has more to say by not saying anything and maybe he’s aware of it. We’ve been treating Dick like a dumb cunt. Why should he like it? By not calling he’s playing right into his role.C: You’re wrong. Dick’s response has nothing to do with character. It’s the situation. This reminds me of something that happened when I was 11 years old. There was this man at the local radio station who’d been very nice to me. He let me talk over the air. Then one day a cloud came over me, I started throwing rocks into the wind shield of his car. It made sense while I was doing it but later I felt crazy and ashamed.S: Do you want to throw a rock through Dick’s Thunderbird?C: I already have. Though mostly I’ve debased myself.
—Megan
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.
—Jimmy
