The new book centers on characters seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple 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 a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the style that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
