This latest work features individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
