The new book features individuals chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around 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 precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
