The new book features protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering 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 often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
