This latest work features protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion 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 the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
