This latest work centers on protagonists pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
