The new book features characters seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
