The new book features characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with 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
