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, itI 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 warn 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....more
This review is long overdue, as I won this in a giveaway with the promise of an honest opinion. I usually give 3 stars to a book I solidly liked, but This review is long overdue, as I won this in a giveaway with the promise of an honest opinion. I usually give 3 stars to a book I solidly liked, but wasn’t wowed by, either because I’ve read things like it before too many times, or because it was a book that entertained during the reading and then fell out of my head. This was not that. I can still see scenes and characters and I remember the story well. The writing was much tighter in structure than most debuts. (I actually think this might have been a detriment to this author, as I wanted him to break the whole thing open and let the characters breathe more). It was well-researched and smart.
My biggest issue was with the characters. The book focuses on two very different couples, one older with established standing in the community, and by all appearances very traditional; the other young, progressive, and just starting their lives.
This book is about what it was like to be a queer man right before and after the arrest of Oscar Wilde. The older gentleman has been having affairs for so long during his marriage that he barely hides it anymore from his wife, and she has to accept it. The younger man married a gay woman who loves him dearly, and he loves her back. He is queer, and some weight and mystery is given to wondering how. The reveal was disappointing, and compared to the overall politics of the time, didn’t matter to the story beyond the young man’s internal suffering. It would have felt more meaningful if he were gay, too, and handled it differently from the older man, or maybe bisexual and in love with his very gay wife. Instead, his secret was a fetish, and never really went anywhere.
The older man was terribly unlikable, and although I often enjoy learning the depths of unlikable characters, I felt this book lacked personal depth. There were glimpses of real emotion, I can see the author has it in him, but the book felt more guided by his mind than his heart. I hope he can break open his taut, sharp intelligence next time to let the characters fully bloom with emotion.
Also, the opening scene was the most erotic I’ve ever read. I thought I’d won an erotica book! It was so in-your-face intense, never to be repeated in the story in the same way. This is one place where the structural choice didn’t make sense.
I’d be curious to see how this highly intelligent writer develops in his next work, but overall I felt let down in a way that annoyed....more
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