This latest work features characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, 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 a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
