This latest work is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise 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 a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent 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 Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
