The new book features protagonists seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim 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 with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
