The new book is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
