This latest work centers on characters seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she states that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
