The new book is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
