This latest work features protagonists seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
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 readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
