This latest work is populated with protagonists chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when 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 with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
