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darlingfarthings 's review for:
I Love Dick
by Chris Kraus
The provocative nature of this book's title might lead readers to expect a novel that capitalises on shock value and humor to make up for a lack of depth, a sequined glimmer of a piece that offers little other than the excitement of salacious scandal. The actual book itself, however, is mercilessly intellectual and referential. Its ambition is constantly stated and underlined, emphasised through dissections of literary theory and references to the art world.
The novel's form itself is deeply unconventional. It's a collection of letters with smatterings of third person recounts, essays, and recorded conversations. Even more boldly, the novel itself is a work of non-fiction that explicitly names individuals as stakeholders in the scandalous events of the novel, explicitly naming people who only seem to enter the novel in passing, at times framing them in lights that aren't so positive. The amount of access we are given to Kraus' life is truly remarkable, even for autofiction, as she seems to care little about filtering herself for the sake of preserving any relationships with the people she writes about. To the outside world, her own husband must be a humiliated cuckold, and Chris herself is a pathetic, delusional adultress. But all of that must be revealed for the sake of the narrative.
From the beginning, I asked myself if Dick was really supposed to be seen as an individual or if he should represent men or patriarchs in general, perhaps even phallocentrism. I think there is some merit to seeing Dick as representative of male critics. Throughout the novel, Chris is consistently inserted in artistic spheres as Sylvere's wife instead of being judged on her own merits. Her own intellect is deeply apparent to the reader, but ignored or disdained by those around her and herself, including Dick. In the same way, her art and the art of women like her are rejected by the artistic world. In their personal lives, while Chris chases Dick (And by extension the artistic ecstasy she gets from her infatuation with Dick as well as critical success from inventing a new literary form) obsessively and arguably with dubious consent, Dick both uses her and rejects her, eventually treating her as an accessory to her husband after having sex with her and cultivating an emotional relationship with her, eventually portraying her as deluded and overly emotional.
While it is true that Chris is deluded and hysteric on some level, Dick's abnegation of personal responsibility and his choice to paint her as an irrational child unworthy of correspondence is misogynistic and plays into the ways in which women are often sidelined, their femininity ridiculed and caricatured. In response, Chris decides to turn her femininity into art, creating a work that is exceedingly confessional and personal to expose the patriarchal biases of art criticism while challenging its beliefs with her own intellectually competent yet uncompromisingly femme work. That work is, of course, I Love Dick, which unflinchingly centers the self, female sexuality and emotion. By disregarding sexist critiques, Chris uses her novel to articulate a singular vision of art, one she believes is just as compelling, insightful and universal as that of her male contemporaries.
The novel's form itself is deeply unconventional. It's a collection of letters with smatterings of third person recounts, essays, and recorded conversations. Even more boldly, the novel itself is a work of non-fiction that explicitly names individuals as stakeholders in the scandalous events of the novel, explicitly naming people who only seem to enter the novel in passing, at times framing them in lights that aren't so positive. The amount of access we are given to Kraus' life is truly remarkable, even for autofiction, as she seems to care little about filtering herself for the sake of preserving any relationships with the people she writes about. To the outside world, her own husband must be a humiliated cuckold, and Chris herself is a pathetic, delusional adultress. But all of that must be revealed for the sake of the narrative.
From the beginning, I asked myself if Dick was really supposed to be seen as an individual or if he should represent men or patriarchs in general, perhaps even phallocentrism. I think there is some merit to seeing Dick as representative of male critics. Throughout the novel, Chris is consistently inserted in artistic spheres as Sylvere's wife instead of being judged on her own merits. Her own intellect is deeply apparent to the reader, but ignored or disdained by those around her and herself, including Dick. In the same way, her art and the art of women like her are rejected by the artistic world. In their personal lives, while Chris chases Dick (And by extension the artistic ecstasy she gets from her infatuation with Dick as well as critical success from inventing a new literary form) obsessively and arguably with dubious consent, Dick both uses her and rejects her, eventually treating her as an accessory to her husband after having sex with her and cultivating an emotional relationship with her, eventually portraying her as deluded and overly emotional.
While it is true that Chris is deluded and hysteric on some level, Dick's abnegation of personal responsibility and his choice to paint her as an irrational child unworthy of correspondence is misogynistic and plays into the ways in which women are often sidelined, their femininity ridiculed and caricatured. In response, Chris decides to turn her femininity into art, creating a work that is exceedingly confessional and personal to expose the patriarchal biases of art criticism while challenging its beliefs with her own intellectually competent yet uncompromisingly femme work. That work is, of course, I Love Dick, which unflinchingly centers the self, female sexuality and emotion. By disregarding sexist critiques, Chris uses her novel to articulate a singular vision of art, one she believes is just as compelling, insightful and universal as that of her male contemporaries.