The new book features characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
