The new book features individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy 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 large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
