This latest work features individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
