This latest work centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
