This latest work is populated with characters pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
