The new book centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer began as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. 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 exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
