The new book centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
