The new book centers on characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet 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 killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
