Chris Kraus Reinvents the True-Crime Novel

"The book, published in 1997, took the form of love letters written by Kraus and her then husband, the literary critic Sylvère Lotringer, and addressed to his colleague Dick, later revealed to be Dick Hebdige, a scholar known for his work on subcultures. After their first encounter, Kraus becomes obsessed with Dick—an irrational longing she can only articulate through missives about the C.I.A.'s interference in the Guatemalan freedom struggle, underappreciated feminist performance art from the nineteen-seventies, and madness."

"But after it was republished in 2006, with a foreword by Eileen Myles, it was discovered by writers like Tavi Gevinson, Lena Dunham, and Sheila Heti, the latter describing it as a novel that changed her understanding of "what the form can handle." In 2016, it was adapted into an HBO miniseries starring Kathryn Hahn and Kevin Bacon. Kraus suddenly found her work being pored over by a generation of women who recognized themselves in her mentally overstimulated and erotically deprived heroine."

Chris Kraus is a seventy-year-old writer who attained lasting literary notoriety with the debut novel I Love Dick. The novel, published in 1997, takes the form of love letters written by Kraus and her then husband Sylvère Lotringer and is addressed to Dick Hebdige. Kraus becomes obsessively drawn to Dick, expressing that longing through digressions about the C.I.A., Guatemalan struggles, seventies feminist performance art, and madness. The book was rediscovered after a 2006 reissue with a foreword by Eileen Myles, inspired a 2016 HBO adaptation, and attracted a generation of women readers. Kraus lives in Los Angeles and promoted a new true-crime book titled The Four Spent the Day Together.

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