The new book is populated with protagonists seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
