This latest work features characters chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated 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. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
