This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
