This latest work is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion 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 be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
