The new book is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
