The new book is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
