This latest work features characters seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
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. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform 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 her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
