This latest work is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer began as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the story of characters 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, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about 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 often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
