This latest work centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder 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 Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
