This latest work centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "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 fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
