The new book features characters seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style 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 pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions 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 a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
