This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when 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, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
