This latest work features protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears 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 the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
