The new book features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
