This latest work centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
