This latest work features individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this 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 makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
