The new book is populated with individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role 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 presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
