This latest work centers on protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around 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."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
