The new book centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended 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 develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
