This latest work centers on protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
