The new book features individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt 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 low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
