The new book features protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
