This latest work centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states 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 hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
