This latest work is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – each trapped by their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
