Chris Kraus

I just finished Torpor and I thought it was so fantastic, sort of surprised she doesn't get talked about more other than for having written one provocatively titled novel (I Love Dick).

What else should I read? I guess I Love Dick is the obvious one but what else is good?

i love dick is great once u get over the disapointment that its about a guy named Dick

Aliens & Anorexia is where I started. One of the great NZ writers who isn't read at all at home, which makes her the Dead C or something. Really glad she's getting some shine atm.

I used to carry the semiotext(e) I Love Dick poking out of a shirt pocket at club nights back in the early aughts when I was at my LJ-iest, heh.

Trying to put us off there after a good beginning with that Dead C mention.

Has she had books reissued recently, is that why there seems to be some new buzz? I just randomly grabbed the book out of my sister-in-law's room because the jacket description sounded good.

AFAIK building buzz/reappraisal went something like => Summer Of Hate being her most accessible work in a while => Sheila Heti et al namedropping I Love Dick + ~vibe~ affinity with Renata Adler rediscovery etc => first UK publication via Tuskar Rock/Serpent's Tail this month.

e of the great NZ writers who isn't read at all at home, which makes her the Dead C or something.

Soz xyzzzz_, though in hindsight I think I can extend this to make Nalini Singh our "How Bizarre".

i love summer of hate

Going through Kraus's body of work (Torpor especially) over the past year was a surprisingly powerful experience, and she's become one of my main points of reference when I think about ways to incorporate fragments of essays into the novel as a form. I'm really stoked for the Kathy Acker biography (to which this review and this talk are related) when she finishes it!

That's awesome - I mean I can't say I have any affection for Acker's work although I do want to read the Mckenzie Wark Correspondence. I'll try and listen to that talk sometime this week.

Soz xyzzzz_, though in hindsight I think I can extend this to make Nalini Singh our "How Bizarre".

Better.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n24/jenny-turner/thanks-for-being-called-dick

Love the discussion - never expected anything less from Jenny Turner - although its a shame she wasted time with that line from Emily Gould.

I haven't read this yet but one thing this reminded me off is Miaojin's Last Letters from Montmarte, that obsessive relationship observed as letters, with a similar engagement toward a specific culture (obscure films, Francophile philosophy etc)

That's not a bad comparison, though what I read of Last Words was significantly more tragic in tone; Kraus works (brilliantly) with subtler frustrations and resentments. I strongly recommend the whole I Love Dick/Aliens and Anorexia/Torpor trilogy, anyway.

i love dick is great once u get over the disapointment that its about a guy named Dick

― flopson, Thursday, 5 November 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What could the Dick jokes in Melville's work mean?

https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/historys-dick-jokes-on-melville-and-hawthorne

So Jill Soloway is adapting I Love Dickinto a pilot for Amazon; it's an odd prospect, but maybe it'll help fund some Semiotext(e) books.

I've got a short piece in a collaborative zine on I Love Dick here, and while there are things in my essay I'd want to rethink now, I'm pretty happy with how the zine as a whole turned out.

Think I'll end up reading a few pieces in the zine before the actual book..

As the editors admit, most of the contributors were writing in the vein of the novel rather than directly analyzing Kraus, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Reading I Love Dick. While I understand why this might have made waves - women writes about desire and obsession for a man as a passive - to actually want to have sex with him - idealising as a man would, giving us a perspective seldom written about...it doesn't exactly scan over that many pages. Once its clear Dick isn't replying and is creeped out, which is no shock (I skimmed to the Dick replies letter) I don't see a level of intimacy that could be sustained in the mind of a reader between the two people you are reading about - so Chris talks and reflects on what she sees and reads etc. but why would Dick be interested in the same cultural objects. They've hardly had a conversation, or shared anytime together. Although this might be what actually happened it doesn't come across as such on the page. I don't find Kraus to be that interesting on a sentence-level (but actually this doesn't matter too much) and in terms of theory it seems name-droppy. The line on Fassbinder is flat-out wrong.

This is an open relationship where Sylvere is a willing/accommodating partner. I like that time isn't spent dealing with it. Part 2 seems to be much better (only just started) where there is less of him.

The other big positive is that this is a universal experience - often brief contacts, a glance, an exchange no matter how brief can be printed on the mind - expressed in a particular way, over that enclosed culture that is talked about as theory as in more 'normal' ways. I think someone can take on this idea and improve it or do their own version. This is where the zine linked above makes sense as a project.

I liked some of the later essayistic material in Part 2. My lack of reading/deeper engagement with theory probably affects the reading, otoh if I'm right it would prove a stumbling block for future readers.

Or it might get more people to read theory. So not a bad thing.

Started Torpor and am really liking it. I'm enjoying it more than I Love Dick, but perhaps it's because I think the narrative conceit of ILD started to wear a bit thin for me as the novel went on. It's surprisingly quite moving and also funnier than I expected it to be.

I also started watching the TV adaptation of Dick. The pilot was strong but I'm not really liking the direction they've taken with the following few episodes. Not that it needed to be too faithful to the text, but there's something that seems a bit off with it, despite Kraus' involvement with the show. Anyone else watching it?

Her book on Kathy Acker comes out soon, too.

the kathy acker book is a little disappointing but very readable(i'm about halfway thru). she plays it as a pretty straight biography. i'm just now getting into the early 80s and she's doing a little bit of a deeper dive on great expectations, i hope she continues to mix up the bio with crit stuff.

being a chris kraus book it is also charmingly name-droppy and as always positions sylvere lotringer as the beating heart of the new york intellectual underground for all time.

Name-dropping is almost never charming