The new book centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
