This latest work features characters chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied 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 Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
