The new book features characters pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness 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 turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
