The new book centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, 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 repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
