The new book features individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden 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 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
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 clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
