This latest work centers on protagonists pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "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". Kraus writes Emma's story 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 different style could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" 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 investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
