The new book is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol 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 Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
