The new book is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression 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 might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to visit 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 with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
