This latest work features characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named 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 protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for 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. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
