This latest work features characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style 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 committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
