This latest work is populated with characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
