The new book is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
