This latest work features individuals pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. 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 social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
