This latest work features characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language 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 hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
