This latest work features individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, 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 tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
