This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
