This latest work features individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning 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 directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
