The new book features individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, 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 own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
