This latest work is populated with characters seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer began as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
