This latest work is populated with characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
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 wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
