The new book centers on individuals pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
