The new book features individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
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. 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 – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
