This latest work centers on characters pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
