This latest work features characters chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed 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. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
