This latest work features individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
