This latest work centers on protagonists chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
