The new book features characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted 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. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
