This latest work centers on individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
