When I told a writer in New York I was going to meet Chris Kraus, she almost couldn’t believe it. For many, Kraus’ reputation as the author who has inspired so many contemporary novelists almost eclipses the fact that she’s also a person, an editor, a Californian, someone you can just email. Friends in Los Angeles were less shocked by the idea that Kraus, a longtime resident of MacArthur Park, could be both legendary and human, as she’s often seen at readings and events, especially for the books she fosters and publishes at Semiotext(e) .
Kraus is best known for the novel “I Love Dick,” which first appeared in 1997 but caught a second wave of popularity in the Obama years, and then again in 2017, when it was adapted into an Amazon limited series . The main character’s epistolary obsession with a man named Dick warps into a kind of “performative philosophy,” an activity that perhaps all of Kraus’ novels are engaged in. She dismisses questions only to immediately ask them: “As if sex could provide the missing clues.
Can it?” She makes digressions that veer into cultural criticism, but with so much more wit and excitement than you usually find in “cultural criticism.” I could list dozens of reflexive, confessional, philosophical novels of the last decade that owe at least some of their existence to Kraus’ work, either directly or indirectly, though my complaint is that too many of them lack the subtle balance between patience and exuberance that kee.