The new book centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, 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 community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide 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 Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
