This latest work is populated with protagonists chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
