This latest work is populated with characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells 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 destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated 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. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
