This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. 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 leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
