The new book is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "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 individual reinvention, because this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw 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 anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
