"I Love Dick" is a cult "novel"--for a
very good reason. This is a difficult train-wreck of a book, not for everyone.
But there will always be people who absolutely need to hear what it has to say.
The publisher calls it a novel, perhaps to create plausible
deniability, but the author, Chris Kraus, has said that everything in it is
true, and, indeed, she uses the real names of real people throughout the book.
The story begins when Chris and her husband Sylvère meet the eponymous,
appropriately named "Dick"--a British academic living in
California--for dinner. Chris fall instantly in love in him. But rather than
hiding this love from her husband, she tells Sylvère all about it--and much of
the first part of the book consists of love letters they take turns writing to
Dick. The letters are insightful, sexy, honest, and hilarious.
While "I Love Dick" is often discussed as an
exploration of female desire, much of it is about how couples communicate and manage
desire for a "third," someone outside of the marriage. At first, love
for Dick seems to re-ignite their moribund marriage, emotionally,
intellectually, and sexually. As the story goes on, however, Chris begins to outgrow both her husband and Dick.
"Through love I am teaching myself how to think,"
Chris writes. "Love and sex both cause mutation."
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