The new book is populated with individuals chasing after 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 could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story 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 hoped this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
