The new book features individuals chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness 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 extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma 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 fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
