This latest work features individuals seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
