The new book features characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing 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 curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
