The new book features protagonists seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses 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 anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive 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 omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
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