I kept reading for the study of infatuation, self, feminism but all the art world references and analyses went over my head. Women being self destructive while being public is a cool idea. "Performative philosophy." ( )

Like a weird pretentious performance art ( )

UGH ( )

This is the first Idle Book Club pick that I've bounced off of. There's only so much wry self-awareness I can take. Maybe this is all lost on me as a guy, or maybe I don't have the necessary grounding in the art world, but I just never felt like there was anything in the book that I could get any enjoyment or enrichment out of. There are some points where Kraus's talent as a writer becomes suddenly striking, but most of that is just washed out in the noise. ( )

I always judge a book by its cover, and this cover screams "gimmick." All the same, I went against my better judgement given the bold claims on the first page inside the book, describing itself as a "literary sensation," "the most important feminist novel of the past two decades," and "essential reading." I passed by it twice in the bookshop before taking the plunge. The first time was with an educated and well-read friend who works in publishing, who found the unread book intriguing. The second time was with an uneducated friend whose only book reading in his life has consisted of some poetry. Mr. poetry barely took any interest and immediately dismissed I Love Dick based on its flashy cover and titillating title as just a way to make shoppers buy something. The uneducated, as is usually the case, was the smarter of the two - and smarter than me. I'm a slow reader, so I usually read around books before taking the plunge, to make sure I invest my time wisely. With such claims made about the importance of this work, however, I didn't do my homework here. I paid the price for that negligence. Do not waste your time buying or reading this book. Even if I had happened upon the LRB's review of I Love Dick, which came out last November, I'm not sure it would have stopped me. The reviewer is too subtle and gentle about the whole thing ( http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n24/jenny-turner/thanks-for-being-called-dick ). So I won't be so kind here: I Love Dick is written by a well-connected name-dropping poor-little-rich-girl who has failed at launching a movie career and so, as a privileged insider, uses this book to stake claim to prestige, or - more accurately - to more prestige, recognition, social capital or whathaveyou from within her already self-appointed prestigious circle of friends. She exploits her connections to relaunch her social self as a writer (while living off her real estate holdings). She exploits her female identity to create circular theoretical traps of justification for this reality-tv-star-who-becomes-famous-for-being-famous strategy that make her impervious to critique, since anyone who would dare to oppose her validates themselves as a patriarchal sexist, as she has deftly and self-servingly crafted the definitions and arguments. How long will this wear in our new millenium, this victimised role-playing of insiders positioning themselves to speak for 'the excluded' while excluding those truly excluded? I could go on at much greater length and detail with specific examples but, quite frankly, I am upset at having been hoodwinked into wasting so much of my time already and, moreover, I am bored. ( )