Dear readers, This week I wrote about the author Chris Kraus, who is best known for her 1997 debut novel, “I Love Dick.” The book, as her friend Jim Fletcher put it, was a way “to write herself out of invisibility.” It worked. “I Love Dick” has become a cult hit, thanks to a resurgence in popularity a decade ago, and was the basis of an Amazon Prime TV series. The story, an autofictional account of Kraus’s romantic obsession with a man named Dick, helped create a new type of female heroine: one who could speak plainly about debasement and failure, for starters. The Dick of the title, a real-life academic, once compared Kraus’s interest in him to the news media’s relentless pursuit of Princess Diana. Kraus has written several more novels over the intervening years, and her latest, “The Four Spent the Day Together,” brings in elements of true crime reportage. Starting in 2019, Kraus threw herself into researching a drug-fueled murder case in Minnesota’s Iron Range. This might seem like a sharp turn from her breakout and its double-entendre (would a book called “I Love Devin” have sold as well?). But Kraus’s work is quicksilver enough to withstand any expansion into new genres — and every book feels like it’s breaking new ground. See you next time. Like this email? We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
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