The new book centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
