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If you’ve ever delved into the groundbreaking autofiction novel I Love Dick (or seen its 2016 TV adaptation directed by Joey Soloway featuring Kathryn Hahn and Kevin Bacon), then you’re likely familiar with Chris Kraus. Born in the Bronx, her portfolio includes the novels Aliens and Anorexia, Summer of Hate, and Torpor, along with essay collections like Video Green and Where Art Belongs.
Kraus, who co-edits the publishing house Semiotext(e), has released a new book this week titled The Four Spent the Day Together, which blends autobiography with true crime, centered on a murder case in northern Minnesota and its onlookers. To celebrate its release, Vogue invited her to reflect on five pivotal books that have shaped her influential and prolific writing career. Below, she shares her thoughts.
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott
This novel, first published in 1920, can be thought of as the Madame Bovary of early 20th-century American small-town life. It tells the story of Carol Milford, an artistic and independent social reformer who meets Will Kennicott, a young country doctor, during her college years. After marrying him, she follows him back to his hometown of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. Drowning in the monotony of endless social gatherings among a small circle of upper-middle-class women, Carol ultimately finds herself yearning for passion and purpose, which leads to an unrealistic romance with a young artist.
What stands out about Main Street is its sweeping chronicle of time, capturing the life stories of an ill-matched couple, while also detailing the evolution of a prairie settlement into a small town—complete with backroom deals and speculations. Lewis’s minute observations combined with the sometimes tedious reality of life make this work compelling.
The Eighth Moon by Jennifer Kabat
Kabat’s exquisite debut novel vividly narrates her and her husband’s decision to relocate to the Catskill town of Margaretville long before the work-from-home movement took off. Both she and I were writing our novels concurrently, enveloping them in a sense of place—each striving to capture the excitement and danger of exploring parallel realities. Jennifer’s passionate exploration of local history and plant life makes her a standout nature writer.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Capote’s brilliant work pioneered the genre of “non-fiction novel,” paving the way for what would later evolve into New Journalism in the 1970s. After the horrifying 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Kansas, Capote established himself in Holcomb, where the atrocities occurred, forging deep connections with the community that offered him their narratives. He also befriended the murderers, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, whose presence signaled a disturbing nihilism in Holcomb’s idyllic mid-20th-century setting. Througout the book, Capote’s minute attention to detail ensures the reader feels a profound empathy for all his subjects.
The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer
This exceptionally brilliant narrative, akin to In Cold Blood written twenty years later, spans approximately 1,000 pages, chronicling Gary Gilmore’s life, crime history, and relationships. His quest for execution, following a “speedy trial,” inadvertently dismantled the federal moratorium on death penalties. Written before the Internet age, the narrative captures deep human interactions in a way that feels rich and varied, as Mailer reflects on the disillusionment and deterioration of American life throughout the 1970s.
Edith’s Diary by Patricia Highsmith
Highsmith’s later work, Edith’s Diary is not merely a thriller or crime novel; it offers a profound psychological exploration of a woman confined to a Pennsylvania suburb, leaving behind her Greenwich Village lifestyle. This narrative can be viewed as a twisted version of Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road from 1961. Left alone to care for her dangerously violent special-needs child, Edith spirals into a trajectory of increasing eccentricity and madness. Highsmith deftly portrays this journey, making it challenging to pinpoint the moment where Edith’s oddities become a breaking point.
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