Chris Kraus at Passa Porta - For the love of Dick

Art or obsession? When American author Chris Kraus falls in love with Dick, her husband Sylvère Lotringer, a sociologist, sees how his wife revives. They both start writing letters to her new object of love. With the novel I Love Dick as an intriguing result.

Although Chris Kraus never reveals Dick's true identity, fingers immediately start pointing to sociologist Dick Hebdige. In 1997, when it was first published, I Love Dick was mostly panned. "A book not so much written as secreted," the leading art magazine Artforum wrote. After being reprinted by Kraus's own publishing house Semiotext(e) in 2006 the book found its way to a mainstream audience via the blogosphere. The book is now enjoying a revival and this month will be published in Dutch translation by Lebowski Publishers.

What does Dick Hebdige think about this renewed attention to the story?
Chris Kraus: I have no idea – we're not in touch. I never revealed his identity, and the novel wasn't directed against him. I wish he would have written an introduction, as I'd asked him, and then we could enjoy the success of the book together.

If we see I Love Dick as a cultural case study, as you suggest in the book, what would be the most important finding?
Kraus: Life isn't personal, philosopher Gilles Deleuze said. I think our little adventure in I Love Dick proves it. Chris and Sylvère are paradoxically, simultaneously, very invested in their marriage and personal lives, but at the same time, they're aware of the bigger picture.

With all the cultural references you make in the book, it could be seen as something between cultural criticism and fiction.
Kraus: Whenever a writer internalises information – when there's a real confrontation between the writer and subject – to me, that's a literary work. The real drama is in the collision between writer and subject. Currently I'm working on a critical biography of the late Kathy Acker…but it's all fiction! I think the American writer Rudy Wurlitzer describes it perfectly: "You realise the past is just like everything else – it's a dream. It's just as much of a fiction as if you were actually writing fiction […] It comes out filtered and refined and has an envelope of fiction to it. Because we're all basically fiction."

In I Love Dick you write you're nobody except the plus-one of your husband. Did this change after the book was published?
Kraus: It started to change even before that, when I left New York for LA. During those first years in LA, I was thrilled when people would actually look at my face while they were speaking to me. Sylvère used to tell me I'd miss the quiet time later on. And he was right! But I didn't want to be invisible forever.

Meeting Dick was the reason you started writing. Was he still an incentive when you wrote the books that followed?
Kraus: No, of course not. "Dick" doesn't really exist in the book, except in Chris Kraus's mind, as the Perfect Listener. That's what I was looking for. After publishing I Love Dick, that changed – I internalised other people.

If you could write I Love Dick again now, would it be different?
Kraus: Je ne regrette rien! But I doubt I'd go through the whole adventure again. I'm twenty years older now.

MEET THE AUTHOR: CHRIS KRAUS, 25/5, 20.00, Passa Porta,