The new book features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
