The new book is populated with individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
