The new book features characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated 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 the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
