This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par