This latest work features individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
