This latest work features protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
