The new book is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when 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, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
