This latest work features protagonists seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment 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 Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
