The new book is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
