This latest work centers on characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
