Aliens & Anorexia, new edition (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)

I loved this book. I loved "I Love Dick," too, while we're at it. I'll probably end up buying all the rest of Chris Kraus's books. I keep doling them out to myself sparingly, like chocolates, because Im heavily into masochistic self-denial.Reading "Aliens & Anorexia" is like watching a midget wrestling match. The midget wrestlers are the subjects of this novel: Simone Weil, Ulrike Meinhof, SM online sex, anorexia, alien abduction, the making/unmaking of Kraus's movie "Gravity & Grace," her touchingly dysfunctional (by conventional standards) marriage…oh and a few more random midgets who jump into and out of the ring at various times. It's not nearly as chaotic as it sounds. Themes emerge, dissolve, and reform again in new and surprising forms.This is a true novel…by which I mean it's "novel." You're not going to read anything else like it.Chris Kraus is a daring intellectual explorer. She goes where…well, I was going to say where few would dare to go…but I don't think anyone has gone where she's gone. She de and then re-territorializes sex, revolution, anorexia, terrorism, aliens, alienation…and so much more. This is a book that challenges you to think along with it.

I got this after reading I Love Dick. It isn't as compelling, but it is an interesting study of someone who is completely absorbed with herself. Somehow she has managed to turn extreme narcissism into a career and I applaud her for finding her niche and making it work. The woman in the story is interesting, but somehow really unlikable. She is the person you got stuck talking to at a party one time and then every time you see her in the grocery store quickly turn down a different aisle. I personally have a hard time equating self-abasement with feminism but I guess it works for some women. Like I said- an interesting read, until you get to the last chapter. It is an outline of her film, and practically unreadable. It's like listening to someone else's long, complicated dream. Means something to the dreamer, but...

yes pro ana

This is a brilliant book, one that I will return to.

This is a very good book that I enjoyed a lot. It's partially a novel, partially a kind of "essay-fiction" of which I don't know many antecedents (W.G. Sebald?). I found many of the ideas stimulating, and I really liked the concept of a novel that coheres from a large number of apparently disparate fragments. It feels bigger than its size, only 236 pages in my edition, but there's so much material--Simone Weil, Paul Thek, Ulrike Meinhof, the Gavin Brice character, narrator's film production experience--that it's like a mini-epic. Thing that stops it from getting 5 stars is ending, which just kinda stops. Last third is the scenario of a movie the author made, her efforts to sell had comprised a significant portion of actual novelistic first two thirds. I felt the switch to the scenario (i.e., like a screenplay, but written more in a novelistic format) was a let-down; I was kinda hoping it would fly completely off the rails, but it seemed to stop short.

I honestly love Chris Kraus. My favorite author tbh. I have read I love Dick, summer of hate, torpor, social practices.. but Aliens is my favorite. It is a bit more heady than i love dick. but it is the same in alot of ways just more emotional and deep and smart. i can identify with chris kraus alot because i am a woman who is also an artist and i feel like a loser alot. so yeah, this is a great book.

Brilliant little book! Chris Kraus' blend of perfect diction and street smarts gives one a sense of adventure in an observably alien world. Very artistic and literary, heartening and humorous. 'Genius' may be an overused word, but Ms. Kraus' style and skill merit it. Very Rare indeed.

I loved Chris Kraus's previous books - I Love Dick and Torpor - and if you loved those books you should of course read this one. I did find it the least interesting of the loose trilogy, and found its attempt to rehabilitate anorexia a little problematic. But overall an interesting read for Kraus completists.

Very interesting observations on feminism and development of an alternative sense of self based on looking out rather than in. Also funny and sexy. Highly recommend it.