The new book features protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness 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 adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
