This latest work is populated with protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting 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 herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
