This latest work features characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, 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 is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
