This latest work centers on characters pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
