The new book centers on protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges 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 standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
