The new book features individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the victim with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, 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 go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, 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
