This latest work is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with 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 story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, 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 individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
