This latest work centers on protagonists chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was seduced 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 novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" 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 exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
