The new book features individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making 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 text. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive 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 major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about 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.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
