This latest work is populated with characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
