This latest work centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
