This latest work features protagonists chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs 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" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit 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, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
