The new book features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "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 hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to visit 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, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
