This latest work centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
