The new book centers on protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet 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, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
