This latest work is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
