A Look at The Four Spent the Day Together from author Chris Kraus – A Renowned Writer Attempts New Ground
The new book is populated with protagonists chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par