This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
