\n<\/p>\n
C<\/span>hris Kraus regards the late success of her first book, I Love Dick, with ambivalence. A work of autofiction, first published in 1997, it chronicles Kraus\u2019s infatuation with a cultural theorist named Dick, a doomed, one-sided love affair that nonetheless pulls Kraus, a depressed, 39-year-old failing film-maker languishing in a sexless marriage, out of her personal and artistic rut. After a slow start, the book became a cult classic and in 2016 it was made into an Amazon Prime Video TV series, with Kraus played by Kathryn Hahn. \u201cTo me, success would have been like a long review in the New York Review of Books, not being a character on a sitcom,\u201d Kraus says now. Her commercial success was a financial boon, of course. \u201cBut who can stand by a book they wrote 20 years ago? It was massively embarrassing to go out and support the book as if I\u2019d written it last year.\u201d<\/p>\n She had, however, promised herself that if she ever achieved mainstream success she would write about it with the same candour that she brought to her struggles. \u201cI\u2019m going to write about all of it. Not just about youth, but about middle age,\u201d she says. \u201cMiddle age is so much harder to write about, because youth is kind of like a trope. We\u2019re very familiar with reading books about the aspirations or disappointed aspirations of youth, but middle age is much crazier ground. It\u2019s not as sexy, it\u2019s not as familiar. So, to write about middle age in the same way takes commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n Kraus is now 70 years old, frank and sharp and funny as ever. She\u2019s speaking by video call from her home in Baja, Mexico, where she stays when she wants to escape LA to write. Her onscreen name, confusingly, comes up as Agatha. \u201cOh, that\u2019s my dog\u2019s name. My account goes under my dog\u2019s email address,\u201d she says, very matter-of-factly. Agatha is a chihuahua-terrier mix and somewhere in the background. \u201cWhy does your dog have an email address?\u201d I ask, when no further information is forthcoming. It\u2019s for spam.<\/p>\n Who can stand by a book they wrote 20 years ago? It was massively embarrassing<\/p>\n The Four Spent the Day Together, <\/em>Kraus\u2019s ninth book, is another exercise in radical disclosure, this time exploring how, as Kraus\u2019s public profile soared in her 60s, her private life fell apart once more when her second husband relapsed into drug and alcohol addiction. She chose to write about being married to an addict because the experience is \u201cunderrepresented\u201d, she says, perhaps because there is so much shame attached to it. \u201cI think it\u2019s maybe more shameful for the co-addict than it is for the addict,\u201d she observes. But Kraus, who writes unflinchingly about shame and abjection, finds writing a way to metabolise those feelings. On the page, everything becomes \u201cmaterial\u201d. \u201cMy character is just a character in the book. It\u2019s never yourself \u2013 even if you use your own material. You\u2019re never the same person, you\u2019re constantly changing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Kraus prefers the term \u201cnonfiction novels\u201d to \u201cautofiction\u201d because her books are as much about other people as they are about her, and she describes her approach as \u201creporting on experience\u201d. \u201cThe fabulation of an entirely invented world of a novel is completely beyond me,\u201d she says, \u201cbut transcribing and reporting to be accurate, that\u2019s something I can do.\u201d She changes names and details, but \u201cI don\u2019t invent anything. It\u2019s more a matter of mixing, it\u2019s a composition.\u201d For decades, she has kept a detailed daily diary. \u201cJust the act of writing anchors you in time and gives a reality to things that have happened that would otherwise be completely vaporous and elusive,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n In her novels, Kraus uses herself as a case study, digging so deeply into her own, singular story that she\u00a0uncovers truths that feel closer to universal, if not for everyone then at least for other \u201cweird girls\u201d. To construct them, she supplements diaries with boxes of photographs, interview recordings and \u2013 in the case of her latest book \u2013 court transcripts. The Four Spent the Day Together is split into three parts: the first describes Kraus\u2019s upbringing in blue-collar small-town Connecticut; the second covers the slow, traumatic breakup of her second marriage; and the third describes Kraus\u2019s journalistic investigation into a brutal murder that took place close to her former summer house in\u00a0Minnesota, in a working-class community ravaged by meth.<\/p>\n <\/span>Kathryn Hahn in the TV adaptation of I Love Dick.<\/span> Photograph: Everett Collection Inc\/Alamy<\/p>\n In her more recent novels, Kraus has written about herself in the third person and used pen names, so that she can treat her characters \u201clike clowns or puppets\u201d and maintain enough emotional distance to write about very sensitive, personal topics. In this book, Kraus is Catt Greene and the character based on her second husband, a psychologist, is named Paul Garcia. Paul says awful things to Catt, telling her that she is old and ugly and that he only married her for her money, and she lives in fear of his rage. Late at night she Googles things like \u201cis my partner abusive?\u201d. The reader is desperate for Catt to leave the relationship well before she does so. \u201cI\u2019ve talked to other friends in this situation, who\u2019ve been partners with addicts. And it really is like a frog in boiling water. You tend to rationalise it as not really the person, it\u2019s the addict,\u201d she says. She tried to find a therapist, but while there are countless therapists who specialise in supporting addicts, the only one she found who helped family members lived miles away, in Santa Barbara. She used to go to Al-Anon meetings often, but she struggled with their official position that it\u2019s possible to carve out a healthy life for yourself while living with an addict. Ultimately, she did seek a divorce.<\/p>\n Kraus\u2019s writing lays bare not only her private life, but that of others. The real-life Dick, identified by New York magazine as the British academic Dick Hebdige, tried to block publication of I Love Dick. How did her ex-husband respond to his unflattering portrayal? \u201cThe publisher wanted him to write an email giving his permission, and he did that happily and gladly,\u201d she says. \u201cThe person who Paul Garcia is based on is now in a very strong and quality recovery \u2026 and we\u2019re still very close to each other in many ways.\u201d Is she saying they are back together again? Kraus laughs, sounding suddenly very girlish, and either embarrassed or appalled. \u201cI mean, who knows,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you\u2019ve known someone for 20 years and they are part of your permanent family, those are such flexible and relative terms: together, apart,\u201d she adds as she recovers her poise.<\/p>\n Anyone who has gone through a year of high school is damaged for life<\/p>\n When it came to writing about her upbringing, Kraus held back until after her parents\u2019 death, believing they would find it too painful. \u201cEverything about our family was based on pretence, and pretence is the opposite, of course, of writing. I didn\u2019t want to hurt them,\u201d she says. Her father worked in the warehouses of the Cambridge University Press but would have everyone believe he was an editor. He was \u201ca little bit Asperger\u2019s\u201d, she says, spoke with a fake British accent and had a fantasy that he was the illegitimate son of a famous Park Avenue surgeon. Her mother was \u201cthe enabler of these fantasies\u201d.<\/p>\n Kraus was a good student, but was bullied mercilessly at school in Milford, Connecticut. By 13, she was regularly bunking off and hitchhiking to bars to drink with older guys. She might have gone completely off the rails had her parents not decided to emigrate to New Zealand in the hope their children might be happier. \u201cThey were timid people, and this was a very bold move. It was the boldest, most radical move they had made in their lives,\u201d she says. New Zealand in 1969 felt like the end of the world, she recalls. \u201cMagazines came by boat, and they didn\u2019t arrive until three months after they had been published.\u201d<\/p>\n The fresh start helped Kraus and her younger sister, who settled easily into school in Wellington. Her New Zealand high school was \u201cmuch more interesting and challenging\u201d, she says \u2013 you actually got to read whole books. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t perfect, but there wasn\u2019t the level of vicious bullying and scapegoating that there was in the US.\u201d Why was the bullying worse in America? \u201cI mean, it\u2019s notorious!\u201d she says. \u201cAnyone who has gone through a year of high school is damaged for life!\u201d Her first husband, the cultural critic Sylv\u00e8re Lotringer, would tell her he preferred working with non-Americans \u201cbecause he said there was something about the American upbringing that made people so defensive and competitive and distrustful\u201d.<\/p>\n Kraus worked as a journalist in New Zealand before returning to the US in her early 20s, initially in the hope of becoming an actor. She met Lotringer in 1980, when he attended a performance piece she had written and performed in New York. They married in 1988. Lotringer\u00a0founded the independent publishing house Semiotext(e),\u00a0where Kraus remains an editor. Although it marked the beginning of the end of their marriage, Lotringer was initially supportive of Kraus\u2019s infatuation with Dick, pleased that she had a distraction from her struggling film career, and he wrote several letters to Dick too. Semiotext(e) published I Love Dick, as well as Kraus\u2019s later autofiction, Aliens and Anorexia (2000), Torpor (2006) and Summer of Hate (2012). Kraus is also\u00a0the author of several essay collections and a biography\u00a0of\u00a0the novelist Kathy Acker, whom she deeply admired and who was an ex-girlfriend of Lotringer.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Inside Saturday<\/span><\/p>\n The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend.<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The game now in American politics is just cynicism, distraction and insult<\/p>\n In 2012, Kraus and her second husband bought a cabin together in rural Minnesota, where they planned to spend their summers. When, seven years later, three teenagers kidnapped another teen and shot him dead on a hiking trail near their home, Kraus drew on her journalistic background to investigate their lives. Before they killed the victim and used his meagre savings to buy junk food, the teens spent 36 hours hanging out together. What had driven them to commit such a brutal and seemingly senseless killing, she wondered? The working-class America they had grown up in \u2013 an ex-mining town torn apart by addiction, violence, family breakdown, poverty and lack of opportunity \u2013 was entirely different from the blue-collar community in which she had spent her early years, and geographically close but a world apart from Kraus\u2019s rural bolthole. A local landlord told her that the teenagers\u2019 thinking and worldview were \u201cdepraved\u201d \u2013 \u201cand I thought that was the most profound answer I got from anyone in the book, much more so than the educators, the police, the lawyers,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s just an inexplicable depravity at the heart of it that pretty much defines American contemporary society. It\u2019s a nihilism and an apathy that swirls underneath everything.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, she watches in horror as President Donald Trump succeeds in his \u201cflood the zone\u201d strategy, creating endless social media diversion to distract from his power grabs and excess. She is due to travel to Mexicali, in Baja California, to visit an exhibition by a Mexican friend who, although a green card holder, no longer dares travel to the US. \u201cWhy has the resistance to Trump been so ineffective?\u201d I ask. The Trump administration is \u201cso well-organised now, so relentless,\u201d she says. \u201cThey are making incursions on every single front: the gerrymandering, the culture wars, the immigration roundups. To be in a position of resistance already takes so much more. It\u2019s so much harder to defend than attack,\u201d she adds. \u201cThat\u2019s compounded by the fact that there\u2019s no political party that has any glamour or allure to lead the resistance. The Democratic party could not be lamer or less sympathetic or appealing to anyone.\u201d One person who has the right idea is Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, she continues. \u201cHe\u2019s obviously less than a perfect avatar of the Democratic party. He\u2019s a billionaire, he\u2019s an enormously privileged person like Trump, but at least he gets it. You have to play the game you\u2019re in and the game now in American politics is just cynicism, distraction and insult.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018Writing anchors you in time\u2019 \u2026 Kraus.<\/span> Photograph: Maggie Shannon\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Kraus is similarly politically outspoken in The Four Spent the Day Together, and she\u2019s likely to annoy some on the left, too. She believes that the #MeToo movement overreached, for instance. \u201cThere\u2019s so much competition within the attention economy that people push things to their absolute limits,\u201d she says. In 2018, she wrote a controversial blogpost defending Avital Ronell, a New York University professor who was accused of sexually harassing a male grad student. She maintains that Ronell, whom she describes in the book as a \u201cphilosopher pixie\u201d, was \u201ccompletely villainised\u201d in the New York Times piece that broke the story. \u201cIt was so clear to me that this was the next media pivot. #MeToo was already getting a little played out and stale and for a gay man to accuse a gay woman, that gave it another month of play,\u201d she says. (The NYU investigation had found that Ronell sexually harassed the student and suspended her for an academic year.)<\/p>\n Around this time, she became subject to much Twitter mockery and insult for being a landlord, having for decades written and spoken openly about subsidising her artistic career by buying up and managing low-value rental properties. In her new book, she recounts since-deleted tweets by book critics calling her things like a \u201cPOS slumlord\u201d. \u201cI understand how people see landlordism as a kind of evil,\u201d she says, because she recognises the frustrations of young people priced out of the property market, \u201cbut it\u2019s a good and service like any other.\u201d And unless you are independently wealthy, she points out, most artists need another source of income.<\/p>\n For years, Kraus has taught graduate art students at the ArtCenter in Pasadena, and she\u2019s acutely aware of how much harder it is becoming for underrepresented artists to break through. Arts and humanities funding and scholarships that were established in the 20th century, when the economic climate demanded a global professional class, have mostly disappeared, she says, and \u201ctechno-capitalism doesn\u2019t need that educated class any more, so it\u2019s all shutting down\u201d. Would someone with her background be able to make it today? \u201cPut it this way, my students or former students who are merely the children of lawyers or architects or college professors feel that they are underprivileged, because they won\u2019t necessarily have access to family money beyond college,\u201d she says. In much of her work she has tried to probe unexplored aspects of the human experience, but this kind of storytelling will become harder. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong with privileged people making art \u2013 they\u2019re great artists,\u201d she says, \u201cbut it\u2019s a single channel of experience that gets represented.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/em>The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus is published by Scribe. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chris Kraus regards the late success of her first book, I Love Dick, with ambivalence. A work of autofiction, first published in 1997, it chronicles Kraus\u2019s infatuation with a cultural theorist named Dick, a doomed, one-sided love affair that nonetheless pulls Kraus, a depressed, 39-year-old failing film-maker languishing in a sexless marriage, out of her<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1556,1001,795,9218,542,16362,1253,873,1126],"class_list":{"0":"post-27389","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-author","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-chris","11":"tag-dick","12":"tag-drugs","13":"tag-kraus","14":"tag-love","15":"tag-success","16":"tag-write"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}