This latest work centers on individuals pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent 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 see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
