This latest work centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy 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 extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
