The new book features protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
