This latest work is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
