Aliens & Anorexia

Description

First published in 2000, Aliens & Anorexia defined a female form of chance that is both emotional and radical. Unfolding like a set of Chinese boxes, with storytelling and philosophy informing each other, the novel weaves together the lives of earnest visionaries and failed artists. Its characters include Simone Weil, the first radical philosopher of sadness; the artist Paul Thek; Kraus herself; and 'Africa,' Kraus's virtual S&M partner, who is shooting a big-budget Hollywood film in Namibia while Kraus holes up in the Northwest woods to chronicle the failure of Gravity & Grace, her own low-budget independent film. In Aliens & Anorexia, Kraus makes a case for empathy as the ultimate perceptive tool, and reclaims anorexia from the psychoanalytic girl-ghetto of poor 'self-esteem.' Anorexia, Kraus writes, could be an attempt to leave the body altogether: a rejection of the cynicism that this culture hands us through its food. As Palle Yourgrau writes in the book's new foreword, 'Kraus's rescue operation for aliens like Weil from behind enemy lines on planet Earth is a gift, if, in the end, like all good deeds, it remains-as Weil herself would be the first to insist-a fool's errand.'

Chris Kraus is the author of four novels, including Aliens & Anorexia, I Love Dick, and Torpor, and two books of art and cultural criticism, all published by Semiotext(e). She was a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow and teaches writing at European Graduate School.

Chris Kraus' work is not just great but indispensable ... I read everything she writes -- Rachel Kushner Kraus' books are all committed to the live wire of feeling, refusing the divide between authenticity and artifice * New Yorker * One of our smartest and most original writers * The New York Times * Devastatingly relevant ... a manifesto for failing as an artist ... full of Kraus's characteristic deep empathy, vulnerability and wit * The Skinny *