The new book centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author 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 text. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated 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 explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
