The new book features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears 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 may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman 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 whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
