The new book centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" 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 leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman 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 whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
