This latest work is populated with protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
