The new book is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
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 pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
