This latest work centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when 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 backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
