This latest work features individuals pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
