The new book is populated with protagonists seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
