The new book features protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
