The new book features characters pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she states that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their histories. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
