The new book is populated with characters pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
