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 is a story of overlapping couples who are opposites, all of them drawing together to create a larger human design. The dissimilar men have been bThis is a story of overlapping couples who are opposites, all of them drawing together to create a larger human design. The dissimilar men have been best friends since school, as have the contrasting women, and they meet and marry in heterosexual complements. Each couple gives birth to a daughter, also opposites from one another, who become best friends. And then there are the boys they desire, as well as the relationships with each parent, all clashing and complementing in waves.
But the most interesting dynamics are between every pair of the four adults, twisting and weaving together in ways that give unusual strength to the whole. So, when the “striding cheerful giant” in the group, the one with “torrents of energy,” suddenly and unexpectedly dies, it leaves them frayed, falling and scrambling to land.
I opened this book having no idea what to expect: I’d read nothing about it, only saw enough five stars from respected gr friends to pique my curiosity about the author. When Zachary, a vibrant, giving, art collector dies unexpectedly on page 4, the book launches us into both past and present to make sense of the irreparably altered bonds. I wondered then if I were a masochist to continue to read: on January 1st of this year, my vibrant, giving, art-collecting father also unexpectedly died, shredding the fabric of my family forever. But, unlike jarring moments during other reads, I found this book cathartic. Whatever the conflicts between the characters, their love for truth and for one another was dominant. That’s not to say it wasn’t fraught and complex: this work is smart and real and written in gorgeous, insightful prose. The high quality, along with the resonating different circumstances, made it the perfect read.
The novel is told in a masterful integration of close third, switching point-of-views quickly, yet seamlessly. We learn where each character comes from, their very different backgrounds that made them who they are, providing us with social and political context as well as psychological. And they are all artists of one kind or another–a painter, a poet, a collector, and a self-image maker, which plays a large part in how they move and grow in the world. Christine, the protagonist and painter, is the one whose struggle is revealed most to us, and her creative expression is key to these relationships, most importantly the one to herself.
“You could not have everything: the whole wisdom of life amounted to that. Whatever you had, was instead of something else.”
I rarely reread, but I’m already looking forward to entering this world again....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
What a lovely experience this was, listening to the incomparable Meryl Streep bring to life a book of Ann Patchett’s. As much as I have my go-to narraWhat a lovely experience this was, listening to the incomparable Meryl Streep bring to life a book of Ann Patchett’s. As much as I have my go-to narrators, Meryl Streep brought a whole new level of humanity, humor, and kindness to each character and to the story as a whole. I could just feel her nuanced, multi-faceted intelligence through her craft. If other narrators give 5-star readings, Meryl Streep is off the charts.
I really enjoyed the story, too. In a way, it was a story about the power of story. A woman, her husband, and their three grown daughters are living together during the pandemic on a farm in Michigan. The family gathers around and listens to the mother tell stories of her past, when she fell into acting and dated a movie star before he was one. There is power in the simple act of sharing stories, and there was something idyllic about this close family gathered together for it on a cherry orchard.
I loved the Meryl-Streep-embodied main character most of all, Lara, the mother, when she recounted what lead to acting in a summer stock theater nearby the farm. I knew what she meant when she said that a summer stock day was packed with the normal intensity of a week, and so on from there. It brought me back to times of sleep away camp when couples and best friends were determined by the first night. The heightened sense of being away from home, and thrown into newness and possibility, was well captured. It’s no accident that colleges and universities by tradition house people of the same age together for a particular kind of learning and transition into adulthood. Patchett’s summer stock brought me back.
The reason Lara tells this story is because all of her grown daughters want to hear about the famous movie star she dated. It’s a strong, believable reason, made more interesting by the sheer joy of youth and first love. As the story unfolds, it reveals the personalities and relationships between them in the here and now. It also deals with the fear that the world is ending. And while the mother is pretty straight with her daughters, she shares only with us what she’s kept to herself, highlighting how stories are made by what she chose to tell, and revealing the paths not taken.
Lara also admits her guilty pleasure of enjoying her daughters at home, despite it being because of the global pandemic. The knowledge that this is temporary makes it all the more precious—just like summer stock. Just like a life. Maybe just like our world.
When I got home from college, I was pretty lost. I’d studied directing theater, and was lucky enough to land a job at an off-Broadway show as an assisWhen I got home from college, I was pretty lost. I’d studied directing theater, and was lucky enough to land a job at an off-Broadway show as an assistant stage manager to famous people. For this I was supposed to be grateful, even though it didn’t pay much. I lived with my dad and family on the upper west side of Manhattan, rent free - I “had it made.”
It’s a particular kind of hard when you are privileged, yet have no agency of your own. When I worked at that job, the hours meant I was free weekday mornings, and so as part of my routine, I took my sister to school on a bus. One day my stepmom came with us, she had the time. She went to the back half of the bus and looked around. Finding a woman next to an empty seat, she held up my sister’s 4-year-old hand, waved her finger between the empty spot and the one she sat in, and said, “can we sit here?” She actually asked someone to get up! I stood, fascinated. I didn’t even know that was an option, to behave that way. And it worked!
As awful as many will think this is, I got a vicarious pleasure from it. When you’ve spent years cultivating a malleable self and someone breaks through the door like that, it’s the sheer unapologetic aspect that astounds more than anything. Although I didn’t inspire to be like her (I recognized her own particular hell), it taught me something - and it took an act like that to wake me up.
Victoria makes herself small. So small. She lives in luxury with her parents-chose-him husband, who happens to be cute enough and nice enough that Victoria should be grateful. She should accept this empty shell of a life because it checks all the boxes, and perhaps she cannot be trusted to make good choices, given her past (no allowance for young mistakes being the very foundation of good future decisions). That message is a soul-sucking one. It’s also one that’s easy to believe. A whole society can’t be wrong, can it?
And so Victoria lives and grows in the world of books, instead. Because although Victoria doesn’t know it, she’s someone who can’t be contained. This story is about her loss of that containment, and it’s beyond her control. It’s against the very nature of her being. But she can test the waters slowly, right? Just stick in a big toe?
Victoria is my new hero. Vicariously, of course.
Thank you to the author and Harper Perennial for an advanced copy....more
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about optimal distance. Each of us is most comfortable in a relationship when our partner, friend, or family member meI’ve been thinking a lot lately about optimal distance. Each of us is most comfortable in a relationship when our partner, friend, or family member meets our level of optimal closeness. It’s deregulating when someone doesn’t allow us enough space to express or unfold, or is content with a distance that leaves us feeling unmoored. And this optimal distance is different for each of us, leaving us to navigate and negotiate each connection anew.
Writers exert a certain control over their words, and in turn, give them a certain amount of space to unfold. With these stories, Updike is perfect in his precision, his words so carefully chosen that I heard the facets, like crystals, chiming up against one another. And yet Updike lets imperfection run a thread where it may to add a touch of freedom, a touch of the subconscious, which dodges into the frame before getting back on track. He cares for his work in a way I wish I was cared for as a child - he is the ideal mother to his creations, cultivating them with exquisite attention and care, and then standing back to watch them bloom into their own separate beauty.
It’s lovely that these stories take us through time with one married couple, watching them as they negotiate their own optimal distance. Updike actually wrote each story at different points in his life, and I could feel the added authenticity. Time is the dimension through which this couple builds meaning, and each story is a unique gem made more beautiful by the reflection of the one that came before. And Updike says as much with what he withholds as he does with his chosen words.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about wholesomeness - how could I not when I alternated reading these stories with those of J. T. Leroy? Updike’s stories felt wholesome to me, even with some of the 1970s details of liberal swing. He had a similar effect on me here as Salter did with Light Years, Stegner with Spectator Bird, and (more depressingly), Yates in Revolutionary Road. I loved each of these works, and could hear Joe from Stegner in Richard, could see Nedra in Joan as their husbands saw them. All of these books expose the insides of white, mid-century marriages in the suburbs (this starts in NYC, but ends up in the burbs). In all, there is a hint of the progressive, but from a time and place when things felt less messy, overall.
So, there is the relationship between the author and his or her sentences, and then there’s the distance the author chooses to maintain between himself and the reader - how many secrets does he share or withhold, what does he think we need to know? How much guidance does he give us while we travel through his story? Writers express their optimal distance in the telling of their stories, and the readers respond on a subconscious level. It seems we enter a relationship each time we read an author’s work, and how satisfied we feel is in large part determined by how well the author’s optimal distance merges with our own.
I tend to like deep reveal and clear guidance, but with lots of space. The Maples Stories gave me just that. I tend to prefer things a bit less wholesome, but was in awe of the artistry with which Updike brought these works into being....more
Stegner’s protagonist and narrator, Joe, feels authentic and lets you in. He’s sensitive, intelligent and funny. He’s also quite a curmudgeon. A 69-yeStegner’s protagonist and narrator, Joe, feels authentic and lets you in. He’s sensitive, intelligent and funny. He’s also quite a curmudgeon. A 69-year-old married white man in the year 1972, in the California Hills. The novel is specific and small. Our journey takes place inside of him, and I often wanted to break free. Stegner is gifted, but I found Joe’s pain confining. The confinement, however, was exquisitely constructed. There were gorgeous moments, like when his wife, Ruth, first asked him to read his journal out loud, an entry from a trip together, long ago. They had lost their son, and in attempt to alleviate Joe’s depression, visited Denmark, the birth place of his mom.
This is where the story picks up. The couple befriends a countess with a sordid story of her own. And both Ruth and Joe fall deeply in love with her.
The ending chapters swept me away. These contained the treasure at the end of an arduous journey, and it was well worth the wait. I felt melted, shapeless and quivering with sorrow and love. It also felt like a natural culmination of all we - the characters and the reader - had endured, and it was one of the richest reading experiences I’ve ever had.
National Book Award Winner for Fiction, 1977....more
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