This latest work centers on protagonists chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she states that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us 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
