This latest work is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
