The new book features protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer began as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
