This latest work centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. And yet, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
