The new book is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
